How can you tell who is Monet and who is Manet?

Well the easiest way I can say is one painter had an “a” in his name and the other had an “o”. But how can you tell the difference? First some background…

Edouard (yeah that is how you spell his first name) Manet was an Impressionist French painter.

Claude Monet also was a French Impressionist painter. At the same time too.

So how can you tell the difference of who is who and what was painted?

What I tell my students is first pronounce MONET without the T at the end. Should sound like Mon-nay. The same goes for Manet, no T sound at the end.

Monet lived to be older and his name sounds like money. What color is money? GREEN. Monet had enough money to purchase a home near a garden with ponds and lily pads. That is what he painted, scenery especially from his garden. So if you see a painting of flowers and lily pads good chances that it is a MONET.

Manet was also a French impressionist painter. He painted everything but especially people. What are people? Men or MAN, kind of like MANET.

Now you can become an instant expert at your next social soiree. Or teach your kids and they will be amazed!

Well I finally figured out the name of the art I was doing for the first ten years of my life. It wasn’t just cartooning, it was caricature. In fact a cartoon was actually in medieval times the chalk drawing for stain glass windows. The chalk lines were where the leading would be. The name stuck and cartoons were born, but I digress….

Anyway, Mrs. Lorrigan asked me to try to draw someone from class after seeing that PBS show. She knew I was good at art, and drawing was apparently my strength (definately not math). So she asked if I would draw Jenny Cook, a shy girl in class. I set my paper on the desk and Jenny with her bright eyes would turn in a demure way that I could not see her smile. So I tried my best and as I was drawing the rest of the class stood behind me. This would be a theme in my future.

After I finished the last strand of her hair, the kids were all excited. “Draw me!” “Draw me!” “No! Draw me!” I became popular for the first time in my whole life!

After sketching a few more kids, I came back down to Earth as I watched the clock’s hands turn to three. Then the bell rang. Mrs. Lorrigan knew I was struggling to make connections with the class. I could see her smiling at her desk and getting things back to order. So this is how a teacher can help a student? Wow! Amazing!

After that I was known throughout the entire school as an artist. In the upper grades, teachers hired me to draw greeting cards for their friends and relatives. I thought that was cool because I actually had some leverage over them. Plus I was getting paid too! I continued to learn about caricature and collected anything with a good caricature printed on it. I would practice different styles and methods. I found many good teachers in the books and magazines I read. I tried so hard to copy the different artistic styles of each artist.

In seventh grade English class, it was time for a demonstration speech. We had about a week to prepare so I knew what i wanted to do mine on. CARICATURE! My shining star of luck would continue or so I thought….

Today I worked with 1st graders and the project was snowflakes. It was appropriate because it was snowing outside. My way of making snowflakes is fun and creative and they turn out quite nice. And in no way are the first graders artistically challenged. They have a bright future ahead of them.

First step is get a thin piece of white paper. Newsprint helps, but it has to be clean and unused. Next make it into a perfect square. That means all sides are equal.

Now my next step is a bit of one I added and always brings many oohs and ahhs…..

Take a blue crayon and draw a big swirl on the white paper. Use different shades of blue but still keep 98% of the paper white.

Now fold the paper with the swirl over so you can’t see the swirls. It should be in a rectangle shape. Make sure the fold is even. Now fold it over into a square. This is the key—-Make sure you know where the center is and fold one more time into a triangle. Now some advanced students might fold diagonally right away but this is for the beginner. If you got the “gist” of this, feel free to fold the angles but make sure it is symmetrical.

Anyway, start cutting snips into the triangle and be creative but don’t cut too much. When you are finished, open up your creation. Voila!

What you can do is make a few more and glue them to a dark blue.

For the advanced you can also save the scraps from the original snowflake and make a positive/negative snowflake. One would be the snowflake on one side of the paper and all the scraps of paper are glued on the other side. Quite the challenge!

I was just watching the CBS Evening news just awhile ago. Yes I am in love with Katie Couric…..you caught me. Seriously though CBS just had a story about cancer cures on the web. 145 million people search the web for answers to their health problems. The problem of course is that there is so much misinformation about cures, and therapy that some people are taken advantage of the entire situation.

I guess that I was lucky as I was diagnosed with cancer before the internet boom. It was in 1995 and I thought I had a constant bloody nose. I went to the doctor who did not like the looks of the inside of my nose (who would?) and sent me to a ENT doctor. After a biopsy, the consensus was clear———-I had cancer. Inoperable cancer as it was in the sinuses and had a stem near the brain. Only three people in the United States had had it and I was the only one alive with it. YIKES!

So I basically asked what’s next? One doctor said I should go to Madison or Iowa or even the Mayo clinic. Then the treatment would be as follows: They would make a slice in the back of my head, lift over my face, dig out the tumor, push back the face, sew me up and hope that I only lose 4 of the 5 senses…...

Yeah.

Don’t we only have 5 senses?

Losing 4 of them would kind of bite. I said if there were any options besides the reverse lobotomy-job they described. The “proper authorities” in this matter said no because this is how it always should go. Now remember that there were 2 other patients that had this type of cancer. And not to be a jerk but THEY DIED!!!!!!!! Now some hotshot doctor said I have to go through this because essentially “three times a charm”?

I hate to quote the Olsen Twins, but “No way Jose!”

I took extensive chemotherapy and 28 treatments of radiation. My chemo therapy on the second round (because the first round did squat) lasted a week at a time. I had to stay in the hospital for my doses and eventually I could take a pack of it and go “mobile” which if you ever had chemo before you usually get back in the groove of things and decide to climb Mt. Rainier and swim the Atlantic in all the same afternoon.  Chemo makes you restless and goofy and tired and icky and sick. I do not wish it on anyone.

But chemo kills cells. Period. And no matter how many cells that are healthy and doing fine that are lost, chemo kills the bad cancer cells that are growing in everyone’s body. Some people don’t know that. We all have these cells in our bodies and some never show up as the C-word at all.

Another c-word I had going was Chelation. Basically with all the toxins from chemo and radiation in my body, I needed that to get out of my system. So this is an alternative medicine and it worked for me. But everyone is different. Basically you are hooked up to a saline drip and for 4 hours you get this in your system and then you pee it all out. Does it work? Well I am still here.

In fact the original diagnosis was that I had 6 weeks to live. Well I am on my 13th year of recovery. The funny thing is that the week-long chemo sessions that I had to stay in the hospital for? They can now be done in one hour. So I truly feel that Cancer will be cured in the future.

Now in no way do I promote my particular way of handling cancer, because it is outdated and we know so much more about the disease. But I figured that this is my answer to Ms. Couric’s story. Yes, we read as a family every book on health and cancer fighters we could and yes we ate broccoli and cauliflower and drank Asiatic Tea made out of kelp. But I really think what cured me is faith in God and my family. I prayed with my mom, dad and my younger sister every night and I have to say this experience strengthened my relationship with God and my family.

So that is my miracle cure for cancer. Having faith in others and God. Sure the chemo and radiation and the tea and so on may have contributed to it, but I really think that faith is the strongest weapon we have when we are in the darkest of times.