The QCFA Arts Cruise

Gallery Update Posted

Our monthly gallery update was e-mailed and posted last week. If you missed it and would enjoy being added to our secure list, please sign our online guest book. This month's update includes new gallery arrivals as well as Arts Cruise news. Bryan Larsen's new prints of "Monna Vanna" are a wonderful way to remember our having experienced "...one of the greatest plays in all world literature."

Have you told anyone about QCFA lately? Forwarding our gallery updates is an easy way to introduce others to our sunlit world. We really appreciate it and chances are that they will thank you for it. :)

We're Flattered

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Somebody get me a fan, I'm feeling a little flushed. :)

Joe Parks passed along a bit of information that his wife, Lois found on line this week. Our local classical radio station, KDFC, is advertising a "Arts Cruise." Prior to ours, I had never heard of anyone doing anything remotely like this. The funny thing is that we advertised our Arts Cruise on their web site for a few months last year. (I wonder where they got the idea?) :)

We provided a full 24 hours of Arts content for a $250 conference fee. Best I can figure, they are offering about 15-20 hours of content and are charging $1275 for their arts program plus the cruise fare of $2000-$6700 per person and that does not include airfare to Europe. Wow! The cruise is 12 days from Barcelona to Venice, longer than ours, but no where near the value. Besides, they do not have "Monna Vanna," Robin Field, Bryan Larsen, Stephen Siek, David Berry, Dianne Durante, Alan Nitikman, Thomas Shoebotham, David Felberg, et al.

I'm glad that they recognized what a great idea we had and I hope that we continue to see more programs that promote the arts.

Portrait of Ali

Bryan Larsen's portrait demonstration was very popular as demonstrated by all of the requests that we have received to see the finished portrait of Ali. So without further ado I present "Ali."

While Ali's portrait is not available for sale, Bryan has offered many of his drawings for sale here.

Fearless Foreign Food

In addition to her lectures, Dr. Dianne Durante provided us with some delightful culinary notes for each of our ports of call. "Fearless Foreign Food" is now available on her website.

"This ongoing series of articles on assorted international cuisines aims to help you choose an exotic restaurant, order a meal once there, or decide on some creative cooking. Each page includes an overview of the culinary background of the country or region, a list of ingredients that are likely to be unfamiliar, and a description of classic dishes. At the end are suggestions for entrees appropriate to low carb, diabetic, low fat, and vegetarian diets. We also offer suggestions for those who love stimulating their taste buds and for those who would rather be safe than sorry. Finally, we list websites that offer recipes of some of the classic dishes." - Dr. Dianne Durante

Dr. Durante is very interested in receiving feed back via the forms at the end of each article.

Singing Jody's Praises

Much of what went well on our arts cruise was thanks to our friend and right hand, Jody Bolhuis. We asked Jody to help us because of a professional relationship that we had built with her over the previous year. I knew that like myself, she took pride in her work and would be a wonderful addition to our team. She proved completely worthy of all of the praise and we were honored to have she and her family travel with us.

If you have future travel plans and could use a helping hand, please keep her in mind. She can be reached via e-mail, jody@jbtravelconnections.com, or by phone, (269) 216-4238 and toll free: (800) 910-2272.

Thank you Jody for everything!!!