Throop, Ron

The Latin phrase "Aut libri, aut liberi"-" Either books or children," has been the mantra of my adult life. I became a father just out of college, at a time when the cult of art possessed secrets as foreign to me as the daydreams of trees. More than anything in the world I wanted to join, to become a member in this secret society. Yet after a million words, and a thousand tubes of chemical paints, and dead-end jobs just hovering above the ongoing poverty-by-minimum wage line, I made the raising of my children a number one priority-all expression kept waiting at a very close, oftentimes inclusi...