Dan Bolles, editor of Seven Days VT, wrote to me in May asking me to contribute to the annual July cartoon issue. Of course! This was a week before I left for Greece for a month. I proposed several topics and Dan asked me to write about Champlain Parkway, a project that has changed the South End neighborhood of Burlington where I live; the comic explains how. The day before my daughter Helen and I flew to Athens, the flight was canceled and rebooked for 3 days later. I took advantage of the extra time to draft the comic and then packed my suitcase with inking supplies, a portable light table, and bleach ink. Over several afternoons at the hotel after days in the countryside at Kenchreai, I inked this page, realized I had made a mistake on the map, made the correction on a separate sheet and inked it too. Two weeks later, when I arrived at the INSTAP Study Center for Eastern Crete, I scanned the inked pages with the help of Lauren the librarian, made corrections in Procreate on my iPad, and wrote the text. I did some of this on the short flight back from Crete to Athens, and sent the inked draft to Dan that afternoon. I colored the comic on the flight back to Vermont and turned it in the day after I returned (in a jet-lagged fog). After several rounds of edits, the page was published on July 8, shortly after the highway first opened, and along with an article about the Champlain Parkway. Now I take the new path whenever I can. I’m a fan!
I guess drawing the familiar streets of my neighborhood and the descent of the new highway and all these little Vermont trees and houses while listening to the rustling of palm fronds on an Aegean zephyr means I can inhabit two worlds at the same time, at least temporarily. Thank you SevenDaysVT for the opportunity!