"When the bell tolls three times, it will announce that I have been killed. If I am killed by common men, you & your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you & your family will be killed by the Russian people! Pray, Tsar of Russia. Pray."

'The Mad Monk," Grigori Rasputin, b. 22 January, 1869

To you few, you precious few, who may check in on this blog, let me tell you that my rough dwgs for a picture book-to-be are well underway. I love being indoors on a cold, grey day, ruling out rectangles w/ pencil on tracing paper, arranging the text, planning, staring at the blank paper - then it gets to feeling like work, in a good way.

It's a story, written by Stacie Hutton, about a coal miner's daughter, & it's scheduled to be published later this year by what looks to be a happening little publishing operation called Headline Books, out of West Virginia. So what this means is I need to quit this here typing and get back to the drawing board! And totally by the way, it was on this day in history, 1901, to be exact, that Queen Victoria died and her big fat lothario of a son got to take on the big fat, long-awaited job he was born to. It's Lyndon B. Johnson's deathday, too. 1973 - I remember - it was just a couple of weeks after old Harry Truman kicked the bucket. jeepers - 39 years ago! So, is LBJ deader than Queen Vicky? Is he higher up, farther on? Anyway, they had a lot quieter and a good deal more dignified passing than the Mad Monk. I mean, click here for more evidence, should you need it that history is not for the faint of heart.