The Melting World

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FUCHI! Fuchi is the coolest 71-year-old I know. She teaches the bi-monthly class in Ainu embroidery, and I love her for her quick wit, candor, and bright sunshine-y energy. Unlike most folks I’ve met in Japan, she gives people hugs and double-handed handshakes without hesitation. She helps us stitch and design our work […]

Here my son and I partake in the saved birthday cake (we got there late). As an example of Fuchi’s super-big heart, she made sure we both had a strawberry and wishes to make, and then, for some reason, she put the pink chocolate heart on my slice. Now ain’t she a sweetie? Love live […]

(c) Michiko Taniuchi (scanned postcard) An example of Taniuchi Roku’s art: Two children out on a rainy night spot a white fox making a phone call. A mix of sweetness, magic, mystery, eeriness and whimsy.

My son and I went to an exhibit last weekend of the illustrator Taniuchi Roku. The event was sandwiched in between two hours of playing outside in the warm sunshine and a thick slice of buttered toast eaten on twistable stools at the museum’s cafe, so perhaps these two conditions helped heighten our appreciation of […]

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Drawing by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Painting by my beautiful son (age 3 years and 4 months)

Scanned postcard: photo by Donna Terek The Dottie Wottie House: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We are all the same color on the inside.” On the east-side of Detroit there is a street unlike any other you’ll probably ever see, called Heidelberg, and its array of polka dots, riots of blue, purple, pink, red, […]

Believe it or not, this is the first time father and son have teamed up together to sing karaoke in a karaoke room. The chosen hit-song, “Beat It,” by Michael Jackson. Can you feel the magic?

Son and I took our first hat-less jaunt down the more-or-less melted sidewalks last week in an east-side neighborhood. The crisp view of the Daisetsu mountains is here for your viewing pleasure. This mountain range is called the Playground of the Gods (Kamui no Mintar) by the Ainu.