Carrie’s Painting of the Week – 12/12/2014
Mr. Owl
By Carrie B. Jacobson
Where the heck have I been? Texas, New England, and flat on my back with strep throat. But no matter, I’m home and getting well, and painting again.
At Wal-Mart the other day, I was waiting in a line at customer service (there were no lines at the checkout stations. Zero. A Christmas miracle – or just the way they run things down here). I got talking to the man beside me. It was in the 40s outside, and windy, and we chatted about it before I pointed out that I was wearing only a denim jacket, and he wasn’t wearing a jacket at all.
“Sure is better here than where I moved from,” he said, and after a little bit more talking, he told me that he had moved from Monticello.
I told him we’d lived in Cuddebackville, and we laughed about the small-world thing, and confessed that we never hoped to live anywhere else but the Eastern Shore.
Those of us who live on the Shore love it. I love the light here, the pace of life, the friendly people, the beautiful landscapes.
Of course, life here is not without its drawbacks. It takes 90 minutes to get pretty much anywhere, if you want to see friends or family away from the shore, or if you want to shop at more exciting venues than Wal-Mart or CVS. It’s tough to ship packages from here, though the women at the print shop that does FedEx shipping are saving boxes for me to package my paintings. Medical services are perhaps not the best here, but where are they the best, outside of huge metropolitan centers?
So shopping and shipping and doctors might pose some problems. But the air is clear, people wave when they drive by, and our little town is quiet and peaceful and decked out for the holidays. Lights are strung across Main Street, and a Christmas tree stands in the gazebo in our little seaside town park. On Saturday at dusk, we’ll turn out to sing carols and celebrate the lighting of the tree, and we will shiver and rub our hands together as the wind blows in off the Atlantic.
Tags: Carrie Jacobson, carriejacobson, Eastern Shore of Virginia, owl, palette knife painter, wachapreague VA
