THE ART OF DODGING GAMMAS

THE ART OF DODGING GAMMAS My experience of the dog days of summer feels like a dog with a dry bowl. So I hydrate with "So Be" and gallons of spring and distilled water. I can hardly appreciate being in intense sun for long on those ozone-hole-days. It's x-rays, gamma rays, and ultra color spectrum wave lengths that get to me. I put on sunblock but the sun can turn me to toast, wearing me down, inside out. Nevertheless, yesterday, a Sunday in the sun, I perused the celebrated Summer Festival of the Arts hosted at Youngstown State University. Sixty-one artists displayed for sale their wares from ceramics to oil paintings, jewelry to original furniture. I imagine the lemonade stand did some of the best business. The fine art artists are struggling. I mingled and was encouraging when I could be. However I chose to enjoy more of the free and indoor cultural events as much as possible. A harp soloist played celestially in the central gallery of the grand Butler Museum of Art. The last piece strummed and plucked was Debussy's "Clare de Lune", a reverie in melody for me especially on a harp. The Opera Guild scholarship recipients sang their little hearts out to Mozart, Bottesini, Schubert, and Straus. They did quite well but the one who won the lesser prize moved me the most, her sensitive interpretation truely sweet and pure. I had brought my Cocoa Grows screenplay along to work but I didn't get to it until the USA Dance troupe performed. They did the usual demonstrations of the Rhumba, Cha Cha, Fox Trot, Jitterbug. But I wrote while they danced and came up with a great line in my script only tangentially related to the dancing. Outside I wrote too few precious words while sitting on a bench under tall oaks by the fountain, half-watching a wood carver carving a two foot by seven-foot tree stump into a penguin standing on blocks of ice, while an amplified Irish band drowned out the wood carver's chain saws and power sander. It's distracting -- hard to create while other arts activities flourish all around. Still, it must have been inspiring. Last night I stayed up well past two a.m. writing. Fiinally I went to sleep smiling, pleased with the day's progress.