Providence Rhode Island, New Jersey, Children's Book Illustration

Shunned House, Benefit Street
Providence, RI


Best place to start on a blank page is with an introduction, and the best introduction is a bit of biography. This blog was born and bred in Brooklyn, and the best exit from Brooklyn was the City University of New York. Now with that academic preparation it was only a short drive to Providence, Rhode Island, and graduate school at Brown University. As Paul Simon said, "Sweet New England, sweet New England". Besides starting my Ph.D. in the home town of H.P Lovecraft (you remember The Shunned House) , I met the love of my life, Doris Ettlinger at the Rhode Island School of Design, right on Benefit Street, that same street on which the shunned house sat. Now Doris Ettlinger children's book illustrator, talented draftsman and book illustrator she was (is). Actually, it was she who showed me just where the shunned house was on Benefit Street at the bottom of the Brown hill. Now, when I first introduced her to my little brother, her long chestnut hair was pinned up tight against the back of her head, and he afterward he told me she reminded him of Hester Prynne. You remember Hester from the old Hawthorne story. New England can be such a dark place. Well, that was prescient of my bro', or perhaps precognition. I went on to graduate and marry D. Now, see I've finished my degree, and I'm planning to be a scientist, cancer research and all that, so I line up a research fellowship at a major cancer lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Now the new wife Doris Ettlinger is accepted into a fine arts program at the same university. Here we move to Madison, which is even colder than New England and the plot thickens.