Finally, the Weirdest Gift I Ever Received

Sorry for all the delays. I'd like to claim that I was busy but the fact is I've been too freaked out by the sinister vibes emitted by this anniversary gift from my wife to have much enthusiasm for taking the thing out of its box:



She told me I'd be creeped out by it. "I doubt it," I said. When I started unwrapping it, my first guess was that it was a piece of antique stereoscopic equipment. Then I thought: Welding goggles?



But no, the lens covers were perfectly opaque--metal painted black--and in any case the turrets held no glass. I was baffled, at least until my wife bade me read the card that came with it:



So that explains the sweat stains in the leather. How many men died wearing these, I wonder?

Phil Lewis, 1925-2010

Last month my uncle Phil Lewis died, and the weekend of the 19th I went to LA for his memorial service and career retrospective, organized by his daughter, my cousin Janet. The above mixed media piece isn't typical of his work, but I wanted to include it on the blog because it's such a great picture of Phil.

The memorial service was everything it should have been, laughing and crying and the palpable sense that Phil was present among us. And in a very real sense he was--the artwork that was his lifeblood from the 1940s right up until the end hung on the walls of the gallery, and almost all the people still alive in his circle were there.