{"id":1229,"date":"2015-10-15T20:46:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T03:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2015-10-15T20:46:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T03:46:47","slug":"is-calvin-coolidge-still-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"Is Calvin Coolidge Still President?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been waaaay too long since we updated our website. So much has been happening, some good, some not, but all very&#8230; happening.<\/p>\n<p>Through the past year-and-a-few, we lost four members of our family, three we were very close to. If you&#8217;ve ever lost someone you really loved, you get how this takes over your life. If you haven&#8217;t, it&#8217;s hard to explain.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a dance that goes with the end of a life, a ritual of phone calls, emergencies, doctors and nurses and staying up too long for too many days in a row. Prior to entering the Valley of the Shadow of Death, we were in a very creative phase, getting a book finished, having art work accepted into exhibits. It was heady and wonderful and it all came to a crashing halt for more than a year. We reeled from loss to loss, numb, exhausted, too drained to hold a conversation for long, let alone create.<\/p>\n<p>The return to life was slow for both of us. Now we&#8217;re creating again. The first novel is done and out seeking an agent, we have some leads but my basic theory is &#8220;Prepare for bad news, then if it&#8217;s good, hooray, and if it&#8217;s not, you&#8217;re ready.&#8221; It&#8217;s gotten a good response from test readers and we&#8217;re hopeful, but meantime, on to finishing the other three in the works already.<\/p>\n<p>I had several sculptures begun, the research phase through, the design finished. Now I&#8217;m in the building phase of creativity. The first to be finished in a year, <em>They Call It Bliss<\/em>, is coming together almost exactly as I envisioned it, which is scary. It&#8217;s a weird piece and not much like anything I&#8217;ve done before. <\/p>\n<p>The other two, the companion piece to <em>His Own Man<\/em> and a piece about autism are not as far along, but developing.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps recent events have deepened my understanding, perhaps it&#8217;s just natural development as an artist, but with every new work, I come through it more fully developed as a person. As I create them, they change me. Growth continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been waaaay too long since we updated our website. So much has been happening, some good, some not, but all very&#8230; happening. Through the past year-and-a-few, we lost four members of our family, three we were very close to. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/?p=1229\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1230,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideajones.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}