The Sad Women

The Sad Women

“I can promise you that women working together – linked, informed and educated – can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet.” – Isabel Allende

When I think about the Middle East recently I keep thinking about how powerless so many women must feel as they watch their world being destroyed. They have their differing opinions and beliefs but I believe their pain makes them much more alike than their religion and background make them different. Because of that I am confident of the same thing Allende is. I don’t know the solution to all these issues. But I believe the women of the region are more likely to find the answers than the men are. I can think of no better place and time than here and now to have women in charge instead of men.

a drawing of 2 women side by side. The left side women is dressed in a blue short sleeve shirt and light blue jeans. Her midriff is showing. She has on a star of David necklace. She has long brown hair. and a very sad expression on her face. The right side woman has a hijab head and full length abaya. She is also in dark and light blue. Her expression is also very sad. Behind both of them is fire, rubble and a river of blood below their feet.

The Sad Women, pen and ink on paper, 2024


 

The Influencer Mermaid

The Influencer Mermaid

This is the first napkin I have drawn in at least 2 years, since the live streaming app Periscope closed down. I am not sure why I started it, probably just because the napkin was handy and I felt like doodling a bit. It turned into a new addition to a long running series I have of mermaids. There are links to the rest below the drawing.


An influencer mermaid with orange hair and a green fin talking about how she travels the ocean to give her viewers great bargains.

© 2023 Marty Coleman / napkindad.com


Here are the other mermaids

  1. The Virgin Mermaid
  2. The Night of Mermaids 
  3. The Modest Mermaid
  4. The Arctic Mermaid
  5. The Lake Mermaid
  6. The River Mermaid
  7. The Fearful Mermaid
  8. The Influencer Mermaid

Women with Microphones

Women with Microphones

As many of you know, I draw in church. When I lived in Tulsa the person I drew at church most often was the pianist. We sat in just the right location to get a good view of her so she was a ready subject. When we moved to Texas and found a church the orchestra was behind a low wall so I didn’t have a good view of them. However, I did have a good view of the singers who led the worship. Next thing you know I was drawing a lot of people with microphones. Most of the time I would actually not draw them while they were standing up in front. I would look at them while they sang, memorize certain things about how they stood, held the microphone, what they wore, etc. Then while the sermon was being preached I would start the drawing with that person in mind. I didn’t worry about being accurate, it was just a place to start on the page.


 

Drawing of a woman singing into a microphone. She has on a dark pink dress and a dark gray sweater vest. Her hair dark red, wavy and above her shoulders. She has blush and red lips. Her eyeshadow is green. She is in a simple landscape of green and brown with the sun in the blue sky. There is an empty talk bubble coming from her mouth.

‘The Mottled Woman’, ink on paper, 2022

Sometimes I think of something the person is saying or thinking, other times I don’t.


 

Drawing of a woman with a microphone singing on a church stage. She has red hair, a pale brown blouse and blue pants. There is a talk bubble on the left filled with rectangles in rainbow colors. There is a thought bubble on the right filled with rectangles of light and dark gray.

‘The Colors and the Grays’, ink on paper, 2023

 

Drawing of a woman holding a microphone singing in front of church with the choir in the background. There is a talk bubble on the left side that has a picture of an apple in it and a thought bubble on the left side that has a picture of an orange in it.

Singing Apples, Thinking Oranges

 

At the Edge

The one thing that occurs to me again and again, especially in Christian circles, is how different what we say is from what we think.


 

‘The Sea Angel’, ink on paper, 2022

Some people are able to rise above. Not many, but some.


 

Drawing of a blonde woman singing into a microphone on an outdoor stage. She is wearing a gray hat, green blouse and light blue pants.

‘Cathie Hill Singing’, ink on paper, 2023

My sister-in-law singing at her outdoor church in Colorado.


 

‘Eve with Singing Snake’, ink on paper, 2022

What if the snake had listened to Eve instead of the other way around?


 

‘The Singer and the Pain’, ink on paper, 2022

The thing is, people say things often because they believe it convinces others of who they are. But if you are around someone long enough their actions say who they are not their words and no one is fooled.


 

‘Interview with a Meteorite’, ink on paper, 2023

The drawing attention to disasters all around the world, the big crazy ones, is often a tool by which we hide our own disasters from ourselves and others.


 

‘Halo of Guilt’, ink on paper, 2023

Being a saint is as much a curse as it is a blessing. You know you did barely anything to deserve the accolade and yet you can’t escape it.  BTW, I do not know this from first hand experience.


 

‘The Show’, ink on paper, 2023

The voice speaks but it is the hand that proves who you are.


 

‘The Hallucination’, ink on paper, 2023

Sometimes it doesn’t have to make any sense.


 

‘Interviewing Emptiness’, ink on paper, 2023

Not everyone has something of value to say.


 

‘On the Scene’, ink on paper, 2022

There is always a camera.


 

‘Many Las’, ink on paper, 2022

So many ways to sing something so simple.


 

Authors I Love – George Eliot

I am starting a new series, ‘Authors I Love’, a companion to my ongoing series ‘Artists I Love’.

OLD AND NEW

I love reading big old books. The longer and older the better. Why? For one reason, it allows me to travel. I was explaining this idea to my wife today after I finished ‘Middlemarch’ written in the 1870s by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). She asked if it made me want to live in the Victorian era in Great Britain. I said, yes and no. Yes, because reading the book was like traveling to a different time. You know how when you go to a new place you see so many things that are familiar but not? There are buildings like at home, but different. Food like at home, but different. Humans like home, but different. The same is true of literature from the past. It is familiar but different. Then again, no. In Middlemarch the language is so rich and vocabulary so extensive that it is like going where they speak English in such an unfamiliar way that you feel like you are hearing it for the first time. Not old from a different era, but new, like a revelation of what could be.

Selected Works by George Eliot


MIDDLEMARCH

‘A Study of Provincial Life’ is the subtitle of the book. And indeed the story is about the goings on in the provincial town of Middlemarch in England in the early to mid 1800s, right in the heart of the Victorian era. The story starts and ends with Dorethea, an intelligent and unique woman who wants to do good in the world. Her only avenue for this it seems is to find a husband who is contributing to the betterment of the world in a big way and help him in that task. She does find this man and fully expects her marriage will lead to the future she envisions for herself. It does not go according to plan.

Eliot sculpture in her hometown of Nuneaton, UK. The town also has a hospital, hospice and school named after her.

Meanwhile, others in Middlemarch are trying to make their way in the world, either through marriage, if they are a woman, or in the church, business, politics, farming or other areas of commerce if they are a man. Much of the story revolves around women both pushing their way into areas that typically are the realm of men and demurring to the men and staying in the background. I said ‘both’ instead of ‘either’ because all the women do both. The tension of who they want to be and who they feel restrained to be is palpable in every chapter and drives much of the novel.

It is also about young people chaffing at the bit of tradition and ‘the way things are done’. Pushing up against that is the height of bad manners and a number of the younger characters suffer career and life setbacks because of their attempting to move forward in science, medicine, politics, society and religion.

Middlemarch book cover illustration

I love her crafting of words to create character, mood, environment and more. Here is an example  –

“She was glowing from her morning toilette as only healthful youth can glow; there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to wind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.”

Middlemarch book cover illustration

And here is another, this one delving into the psyche of humanity.

“She sat tonight revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her lips often curling with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fools’ caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s were transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lap they alone were rosy.”

You can find more quotes at the end of this post.

Here is a link to a more thorough and thoughtful appreciation than I can give. The Genius of Middlemarch

Hand cast of Eliot’s hand

Eliot, being one of the most famous writers of her era, had a death hand cast made instead of a death mask to honor and highlight her accomplishments as an author.

Here is a photo of her. She looks surprisingly like Oscar Wilde, don’t you think?

George Eliot

Oscar Wilde


SILAS MARNER

I have heard the name most of my life. I knew he was a victorian character but I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if he was created by Dickens or Dickensen or any other author. Once I got this book I knew of course. I bought it to read Middlemarch and it wasn’t planning on reading any of the other stories, at least not right away. But I was not ready to be done with Eliot and I have always wanted to know who Silas Marner was in literary history so now was my opportunity to find out.

from 1985 film

The full title of the book, ‘Silas Marner – The Weaver of Raveloe’, tells you who he is, at least professionally. Like Middlemarch this book shows a slice of provincial life, but with the focus on one particular character.  Marner is a solitary man living along on the edge of town. He weaves linen that he then sells through various stores or directly to some of the wealthier women. He is seen as an eccentric man with whom good society would not entertain a relationship. They would however buy his product as he is a meticulous weaver who does excellent work.

book illustration

He saves his gold coins religiously and obsessively counts them at night. Through a series of horrible circumstances he has those coins stolen from him. He, nor anyone else, knows who stole the coins. Meanwhile through another series of horrible circumstances he becomes the caretaker of a baby who is not yet able to walk.

book illustration

This conjunction of loss and gain is at the heart of the story and at the heart of Marner’s transformation within himself and within the community. There are good and bad people throughout but in all cases the personalities are complex and subtle, rich characters who are not cliche cut-outs of virtue or vice.

book cover illustration

The story is ultimately uplifting and inspiring but it is never cloying or pandering. It’s a great place to start reading to get an appreciation for Eliot’s work.

from 1916 film

Once again she has some astute quotes that show her insight into human nature.

“A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic.”

“The yoke a man creates for himself by wrongdoing will breed hate in the kindliest nature.”


Brother Jacob

I thought this was probably about a monk but it wasn’t. It is a short story about a greedy man, David Faux, who steals from his family and sets off overseas to seek his fame and fortune as a confectioner. He leaves behind a brother who is an ‘idiot’ (Eliot’s term, not mine). I think now he would be seen as neurodivergent, perhaps with Down Syndrome. The story then fast forwards many years and David reappears under another name in a nearby village where he runs a successful confectionary shop. His bright future in marriage and business is dependent on it never being found out his real name and place in the world. Suffice it to say this does not go according to plan.

One of the best plot devices Eliot uses is the man who has it all planned vs the messiness and unpredictability of real life. While she allows it to happen to most everyone in all her stories, it is especially satisfying when it is combined with the underlying moral failures of a character.


The Lifted Veil

This amazing short story is a departure for Eliot in that it is about the supernatural. The protagonist finds he is able to hear peoples’ inner thoughts. Everyone that is but his brother’s fiance, on whom he has a crush. His mind has to imagine what she is thinking and because he is completely enamored of her he creates a deep and rich inner thought life for her. That drives him into even deeper love.

The story is about what happens when he no longer has to see her from a distance and suddenly is able to hear her thoughts as well. Are his hopeful conjectures of her deep inner life proven true or are they dashed? It’s worth reading to find out.


More Middlemarch Quotes

“No evil dooms us hopelessly except the evil we love, and desire to continue in, and make no effort to escape from.”

“But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt…had for the general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.”

“A man vows, and yet will not cast away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.”

“Fear is stronger than the calculations of probabilities.”

“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think it’s emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.”

“But even while we are talking and meditation about the earth’s orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day.”

“For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.”

“Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”

“Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say.”

“I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest – I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much than to condemn too much.”

“There is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus.”

“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”

“The truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”

“Philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.”

“Her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.”

“When gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds.”

“Solomon’s Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.”

“Selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world.”

“There is no religion to hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don’t know worse. It seems to me it would be a poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don’t believe such harm of him as you’ve got no good reason to believe.”

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.”


 

Simplicity in Form and Function

This is republished from 10 years ago today (10/2/13) – It’s still true.


Simplicity

Function

I saw a quote from Einstein the other day. Now, I don’t necessarily believe he actually said it, since a gazillion quotes are said to be from him that aren’t, but it doesn’t really matter. The quote is this: “Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury…to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both the body and the mind.”

I disagree with it for a few reasons. One is nothing is ever ‘best for everyone’.

Form

Two, beauty (or form if you will) matters. It’s not immaterial or without merit to have something be pleasing or interesting to the senses. A great illustration of this is seen in this interaction from the movie, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ where a young woman is given a lesson in how her purely functional, non-luxurious sweater actually has its roots in choices made at the top end of fashion luxury.  Take a look.

Form and Function

The quote I chose allows for both form (beauty) and function (usefulness) to have it’s place in our lives. If we focus on those two things, both equally valid, we can actually live a good life.


Quote by William Morris, 1834 – 1896, English writer, designer and artist.  A founding participant in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement.