Greetings from Wichita! It's been a while, hasn't it? Toss that up to another crazily busy semester. Sue and I both have some new responsibilities this time around, both exciting and challenging. Sue's new position as Division Chair has meant dealing with quite a bit more work. I probably shouldn't go into any greater detail here (cough! hack! politics, cough!) but I'll say that Sue is rising to the challenge and doing her best to give her students the same attention and care as always. She has been enjoying teaching latin this semester, and has managed to find time to take a class on James Joyce, taught by friend and fellow English faculty, Marguerite. As for me, I applied and got a new Student Assistant position working with Newman's in-house Graphic Designer, Darrel. Which means that I am no longer just a design student, but now a student designer as well! I've had the position just a couple weeks but it's offered a lot of great experience. I've gotten to go to a local printer to do press checks and even direct a photo-shoot (of the campus chapel for a new brochure). I'll continue to work a few hours here and there for Julie in Arts & Humanities such as updating the HTML on the Steckline gallery's Facebook page and churning out the occasional flyer. Julie and Mary (director of the Art Dept) have been awesome to work with so I will miss them but I'm just across campus so dry your eyes y'all!

Oh yeah, we went to the State Fair again this September. The only news to report from this go-round is...well, I can't really explain it to you. I'll just put it this way: Crispy Kreme Burger. Nuff-said. When asked how she felt about it, Sue made this face.

This semester has also brought a new arrival to Wichita, my mom Ann! Freshly retired from the Post Office (yahoo!) she took the drive out with her two dysfunctional

cats and found an apartment near downtown right next to the confluence of the two rivers and the Keeper of the Plains. Already she's made friends and has found herself busier than she was in New York. I'm sure she misses living a block from the ocean in Long Beach, LI, but she likes the more relaxed pace here and the friendliness of the people. I'm sure she especially likes not working for the Post Office.

I have to say that Autumn in Kansas is pretty awesome. The season that

lasts about two weeks in New York has been long and pleasant with warm temps here and hella more sunny days. It's also funny to note how into Halloween people are around here. Especially here in College Hill which is apparently the trick-or-treat mecca of Wichita, hosting kids from all over the city. This is our first Halloween in this neighborhood and we were not prepared. We ran out of candy three times before we decided to turn out the lights and hide in the basement hoping that the little buggers would go away. No, seriously, the kids were polite and sweet, there were just a LOT of them. Then there is the incredible spectacle of the "Halloween street" just a few blocks

over from us. A section of Broadview is closed off to cars and the home owners along this stretch go to unbelievable lengths transforming their entire property. They must prepare all year for it, building giant pirate ships on their lawns, encasing their house in spiderwebs patrolled by enormous spiders. And then they hangout in front of their houses all day and night giving out ungodly amounts of candy. I wonder if they have to take out loans to pay for it all? Even our across-the-street neighbors rent a popcorn cart for the occasion. It's crazy. Go figure, wichita is a very religious city, and so naturally also has the most exuberant Halloween celebration! (Photos courtesy of the Wichita Eagle)

OK, now I have to give props to a couple local institutions. You wouldn't think I'd be blogging about a local pizza place, but I'll be damned if Bartelli's Pizzeria doesn't make genuine New York style pizza. It is literally the only place in town that even comes close. Knolla's is a local favorite that claims to be New York style, but don't be fooled, Bartelli's is the real deal. In the home town of Pizza Hut and Poppa Johns, the family that runs Bartelli's used to live in New Jersey, (close enough for us) and they know how to get their crusts both thin and chewy. Any NY pizza chef will tell you the secret is the water, and Bartelli's must import it straight from the Adirondacks. I also have to give it up for Raging Sea, a hard working Irish-folk band who Sue and I have seen a few times now. Just this past Friday we caught them for an intimate performance at our local favorite, the Donut Whole (mmm cake donuts and leopard print). Lead singer, guitarist, fiddler, and all around decent bloke, Shaun, also happens to be in my Contemporary Art History class.

Speaking of classes, check out some of the pieces I've produced in what has turned out to be my funnest class this semester, Printmaking. I bought my own carving tools and definitely plan on continuing once my schooling is done.

This is called The Lab, a linoleum block relief print. Carve the design out of a shallow block of linoleum, the areas you carve will stay white, the areas you leave raised will transfer the ink to the paper.

This is Say Nothing. A callograph which is also a relief print except instead of carving the design out, you build it up using various materials. Certain materials will give it a sense of texture. I used sandpaper to get the decaying bared brick look of the buildings.

This is a second version of Say Nothing using the intaglio method. Where a relief method uses the raised areas to transfer the ink, with the intaglio method, it's the lower areas that get filled with ink, the raised areas get wiped clean. You then use paper that's been soaked so it presses into the lower areas to absorb the ink. Creates a roughly reversed image from the relief print. Some interesting messy effects but is hard to control.

These three, called Funk 1 & 2 and Science, are monoprints, one of a kinds. You apply different color inks to a sheet of glass (plexiglass in our case) and do multiple "drops" top get the final image. Also creates some neat messy effects but I had trouble getting the colors to blend all that well.

Well, I guess that's all for this time. We love and miss you all, talk to you soon!

So here we are on the precipice of another exciting semester with our hands in the air or our eyes closed depending on how you handle such excitement, or in Sue's case, a constant stream of obscenities intermingled with startled sideways looks as if someone was sneaking up behind her. I kid I kid, but Sue is under quite a bit more pressure since being awarded (is that the right word? I don't think so) the position of Division Chair. The division thing is new at Newman, they used to have departments and then they put some departments together and called it a division. And so, the position Sue is wrestling with is also new which has made for some challenges, but she is rising to meet them if she has to strangle them with her bare hands. Sue is excited to teach latin this semester, the first time in a number of years that it's been offered at Newman and another opportunity for Sue to demonstrate her smartyness (I know, not a word. Ask Sue, she'll know what word I meant) She's also teaching another Origami class.

I'm psyched to get underway. Looking forward to Printmaking, Layout and Production (my only Graphic Design class this time around), and Contemporary Art History. Not looking forward to Algebra (there goes my 4.0), and mildly intrigued by Intro to Psychology. I crammed in two more classes this passed summer session: World Civilizations 2 and Intro to Scripture. Completing a semester in fives weeks is pretty

insane (especially when you have five papers to write) but it brings me one step closer to being an unemployed college graduate. Along with teaching a class, Sue also took a class this summer, anatomy! What did I say about smartyness? She aced it, though she only audited the class so technically it never happened. Forget I said anything.

It's been an action packed summer. A few days after finishing up Intro to Scripture, Sue and I were on a plane for our three weeks in the

Northeast. We visited with Nan and Pop in Pennsylvania and managed to hang out a little with friends in the area. Thanks to the Folkerts for putting me up for a few days so I didn't have to sleep on Nan & Pop's vertebrae rearranging couch. We managed to get up

to Boston to visit with friends Diana and Vitali and the twins

Nadia and Kai and we got to see their new house, bought roughly

around the same time as ours. I have to say, as a seasoned New York driver, Boston is insane. The roads are faithfully modeled on the original colonial street plan: traffic circles instead of traffic lights and not a straight line anywhere in the city. Put this together with Northeast style congestion and I'll take my NYC kamikaze cabdrivers any day. But traffic was one thing we didn't do without. After three weeks, you almost expect to see actual tumbleweed on Wichita streets after all the traffic we contended with. Yes, I'm spoiled already.

Anyway, we spent a few days in beautiful southwestern Vermont with Sue's uncle Hall and aunt Clare surrounded by lush green mountains and relatively cool temps. They have a beautful piece of property right next to an old inn. Highlights: our visit to Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln's grand estate and my breakfast with uncle Hall and his buddies the ROMEOs (Retired Old Men Eating Out).

From there we made it to Corland NY and the surprise 40th birthday party for my oldest friend Greg. Greg, Stacey and their son Calvan moved upstate late last year and it was great to finally see their place and their cool

little town. It was also a rare opportunity these days for me to see nearly all my friends in one place. We spent the last week of our trip

in NYC and on Long Island. It was nice to visit some of my old stomps like a tasty meal at Uncle George's, one of Astoria's best Greek restaurants, not far from where I used to live. We visited the

Noguchi museum in Long Island city and Sue took me to see the musical Fela, about the life of afro-beat legend Fela Kuti, which was a lot of fun, awesome music and dancing. We even managed to stop in Flushing to visit the Shaolin Temple where I used to study.

But we also got to see some cool new things like the newly opened Highline, a section of elevated track on the lower westside of Manhattan

that used to be bring freight trains in and out of the Meatpacking district. The last train ran in 1980 and since then it has gone to ruin, the track bed covered by weeds. Then, after community pressure, the city renovated it, turning it into a cool public space, an elevated park and walkway, adding places to sunbath or hang out and leaving sections of track along with the weeds and other plants that they've added. So far, they've only opened Faze One, the southern-most section, but the rest of the line is set to open in the coming years.

Sadly, a few weeks before our trip, we found out that our kitty Sara was sick with lymphoma and as her health was deteriorating quickly, we were forced to put her to sleep before we left. She was a great kitty, always sweet, never acting out or giving us attitude. I had her for fourteen years, so it was naturally hard to make the decision, but it was time, she had a good life.

Finally, we are a week away from the arrival of my mom, who has retired from the Post Office and is set to relocate to Wichita. She has her apartment picked out in the Riverside area, right next to the Keeper of the Plains, close to parks, museums and downtown. She'll be able to live so much better here than she could manage if she retired in NY and, of course, it'll be great for Sue and I to have her around.

Check out new tune Busted above, also a silly little video for Primordial.

I admit it. When it comes to music, I've been a little bit of a snob since we moved to Wichita. Nothing's good enough for the guy from Neeeewwww Yoooooork. I'm not a bad person,

just a victim of circumstance. But it does take a little while to get to know a new city, to discern where the "cool" kids hang out. Well, it may be Africa Hot outside right now, but COOL is on the rise in Wichita, mark my words. Yesterday was the first annual LIV Festival, an all day music shindig featuring some of the coolest sounds I've heard since we've been here. Held at Market Street, an industrial deadend by the highway overpass where they've turned a bunch of the warehouse buildings into art galleries, the fest included two stages set up at either end of the street along with the work of some local artists and grilled goodies a whole lot cheaper than festival food anywhere else. One stage featured local bands and the other was out of

town acts and, encouragingly, I was more drawn to the local stage. Styles ranged from noisy indie

rock, electronic, hip hop and breakneck bluegrass. My new local favorite, Powerlifter, who make noisy dance/thrash electronica using Nintendo Gameboy consoles, put on a delightfully sarcastic very punk performance, technical difficulties and all. Turn-out wasn't bad for a first go, just enough to make two stages playing simultaneous acts not feel too barren. It was a good day, hot enough to cause delirium but isn't that a required component of all summer festivals?

Technically, Summer arrives tomorrow, but its been here for a few weeks at least, flirting with

100 degrees on a regular basis. I finished my first summer class (World Civ 2) and am ready to plunge into the

second one this coming week (Intro to Scripture). Sue taught a writing class first summer session but also took an anatomy class! She impressed some of her scientific colleagues who think that humanities folk are good for takin' up space and little more. Of course she got an A. I added a second raised bed to the backyard and hung a clothes line so we don't have to waste electricity using the machine. Besides, the hot Kansas sun dries clothes faster than the machine does anyway, and ya know something? My clothes smell delightful.

More on the cool music front: ska-punk-metal-funk-everything-else powerhouses Fishbone (!!!) came to Wichita a few weeks ago. They played at a little Mexican restaurant in the big catering room behind the place. The turn out was good and they kicked all kinds of A. I almost didn't go because I was a little tired, but good friend Julie convinced us to make it and we had a blast. The entire philosophy dept of Newman turned out for

the show as well, and you know philosophers can party.

Sue and I had a fun weekend last week as well when

we took a drive forty-five minutes northwest to Hutchinson (home of the state fair!). We were going to camp at a nearby lake but thunderstorms passed through the area so we wisely decided to skip it (lightning is scary when you're the tallest thing around). We stayed in a cheap motel in town and

visited the Cosmosphere space center, which has a surprisingly in-depth US and Soviet space program and Cold War exhibit. The Cosmosphere produced 80% of the props used in the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13. They also have an IMAX and the classic

planetarium show. Then we visited the Underground Salt Mine Museum, an active salt mine 650 feet beneath the Kansas prairie. Interestingly, the mine,

because of the lack of moisture, is used by all the major movie studios to

store their reels, every state and even foreign governments or companies who want somewhere secure to keep valuable records or other stuff. The mine isn't cramped or scary like you might imagine (unless the lights go out), the interior spaces are huge and airy and always naturally 68 degrees. A cool experience and one of the many exciting things awaiting any persons who plan to visit our

humble home!

Anyway, check out the new half-video for Primordial and the new song Busted, at the top of the blog. Again, remember that we'll be in the Northeast last week of July to mid August. We'll be with Nan and Pop in

Pennsylvania, then to Boston and

Vermont and back to New York for the last week. Hope we can see at least some of you. Oh and happy Father's day to all the dads!

See you soon.