Old business, new contest

If you follow me here, I imagine you've been wondering what happened: A portrait a day for 18 days, and then...crickets.

Two things:
One was a class for which I was readying myself. I contracted with Library Juice Academy to teach an online course in Young Adult Literature beginning today (February 3rd), and since I had never taught online before, I had to:

• Take my 10-week in-person class for UCLA and adapt it/pare it down to work in six weeks online;
• Learn to use Moodle;
• Learn how to record a voiceover lecture behind my Powerpoints, synch up voice with slides, export as an MP4 file, and upload to YouTube as a video;
• Battle with Microsoft over how to make this last process work on the Mac (the most challenging part! The upshot? "Sorry, we can't help you. Have a nice day.")

In the end, it turned out to be moot, because A. I didn't have enough sign-ups, and B. even if I had, California has passed some new law about how you can use and employ independent contractors and the upshot is, LJA is "disavowing" all its California lecturers except those who have already established their staying power and popularity to the point where LJA can put them on the payroll. So, the deal is off, no class. Honestly, I'm just as happy, because now I can take my work somewhere else and market it more lucratively, or hey, start my own school? And I did learn a lot, which I can export to other endeavors.

Thing number two was another contest entry! You will recall my map for theydrawandtravel.com. Well, that website has a sister site, literally—Nate Padavick runs TDAT, and his sister, Salli Swindell, runs theydrawandcook.com. This contest is for "Beans Around the World," and is co-sponsored by the U.S. Dry Bean Council (who knew there was such a thing?). There are four prizes of $1K apiece and, as with the map, always a chance to be in a book at some point.

I did my Bonanza Beans recipe, which is simple but tasty, and added on a bonus dish (Tennessee Corn Pone) that you can make with the leftover beans when you're sick of eating them on their own merits. Here it is:

It was interesting to see in what ways making the map was more challenging and in what ways designing the flow of the recipe took ingenuity. If you would like to, you can go to the website and "heart" my entry, though I don't know if it makes any difference to the judging! https://www.theydrawandcook.com/illustrations/15377-bonanza-beans ...and be sure to look at the other 339 entries, most of which are amazing! So many styles, so much talent, and so many innovative ways to eat beans! I'm sure the "Council" will be pleased with their results.

This week, since I'm not teaching, I plan to get back into some of my other projects, including portraits and decluttering. I'll get back to you.