the group conscience

It's always a changeable dynamic when you get 12 people (especially creative types) together in a community that isn't self-selected. There's often a scapegoat or an outsider who got that way by being difficult. In our case, there's a guy who has been provocative and argumentative at best, and truly offensive at worst. We're not sure if his CV is fabricated- his work is awful and he doesn't seem to work much anyway. He will be receiving a written warning today- honestly, he scares me a little and his studio is next to mine, all the way in the back.

Our group is a pretty friendly one, very active. I managed to dodge a volleyball game yesterday but I might be pulled in today later on. They don't realize how hideously bad I play volleyball and most other sports that involve contact with a round object.

One thing the difficult man said amused me- they call Santa Fe "City of Enchantment," but he said it was more like "City of Entrapment" because so many people come here for a short stay and then never leave. In my usual way, I peruse the real estate section. Rents here are low. I met a guy in the art supply store (paper department) who came here from San Francisco and said that his rent, internet, cable and phone were $650- about what he paid to park his car in SF. I've already met a number of people who came for a residency and decided to stay.

I worked on my encyclopedia project all day yesterday. I'm cutting the pages and there are over 1000 (but that's only 500 something actual pages) I might not do all the pages, though, because the way I'm cutting them I'll only get about halfway through before I reach the outer edge of the book. I thought at that point I'll start adding to the pages, but I'll decide that when I get there. I just don't want it to look like I was too lazy to do all the pages.

Speaking of pages, there was a nice review of the Philadelphia show in the Inquirer over the weekend.