I apologize for the plug. I'm having an art show this August at Gallery Saratoga with Stephanie North, a noted jeweler in the Bay Area. The show will run from August 4 to September 6, and we will have a reception on Saturday, August 8, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. My wife and nieces will help me to serve snack and drinks and we'll try to answer any questions you may have. I would be happy to see you come.

I have been a member of Gallery Saratoga for 3 years now and have enjoyed being in the company of a lot of great painters, ceramicists, jewelers, silk artists, wood carvers, and gourd makers. Our gallery is a co-op gallery, which appeals to me because of the democratic nature of the decision making. I've learned a lot from being in this gallery about the business aspects of selling art, and notice that a lot of the conversations with other artists has to do with marketing and selling our work. If you're in the Saratoga area in California and you wish to visit Gallery Saratoga, you could drop by at 14435-A Big Basin Way, Saratoga, California 95070

In the book Original Zinn: Conversations on History and Politics, Howard Zinn said in an interview:

"That is a forgotten moment in the presidency of FDR, when he outlined an Economic Bill of Rights. It is still sort of a surprise to Americans, who know that we have a Bill of Rights, to be told that this Bill of Rights applies only to certain political rights, such as the right to free speech and assembly, the right to a lawyer, the right to a fair trail. People are surprised when you tell them, "But, you know, the Bill of Rights does not include economic rights, does not include the right to health care, does not include the right to a job, does not include the right to decent housing, does not include the right to food." And without these rights, without economic rights, how can people make use of the political rights? Because, after all, what good is freedom of speech if you don't have the wherewithal to utilize that freedom? What good is the right to counsel if you can't afford a lawyer, and therefore you must have a court-appointed lawyer? All of the political rights are subject to the weakness that if there is no Economic Bill of Rights, then they don't have very much meaning."

Howard Zinn, the famed radical historian, wrote in his book Artists In Times of War:

So the word transcendent comes to mind when I think of the role of the artist in dealing with the issues of the day. I use that word to suggest that the role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media.

The political cartoonist fulfills Zinn's definition of the artist as a questioner of conventional wisdom and the lines that are given to us by government. As a tradition that began in Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries with French and British satirists like William Hogarth and Honore Daumier lampooning the monarchies of the day, the political satire came to the American shores and blossomed through the works of Thomas Nast . Often called "The Father of American Political Cartooning", Nast was the first major political cartoonist with a national influence, and his cartoons were generally in favor of the most progressive causes of the time.