A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Red Panda otherwise known in some places as the original Fire Fox. Of course, I did not want to neglect actual foxes knowing that some of them are endangered as well. The Island Fox is one of them. On one island for example (Santa Rosa) there are under 14 Island Foxes left. 14?? There are more people in my 4-story brownstone where I live. This makes me sad and inspired my newest foxy painting, “Our Morning Ritual” – dedicated to all endangered foxes across the globe – including the most critically endangered Island Fox.

Another thing I wanted to say to everyone: I’m sure some of you have noticed that we’ve been available for outdoor markets less and less over the course of 2010. I just want to give my wonderful friends and supporters a quick note as to what’s going on. Lately, I’ve had to endure quite a bit medically – and have had repeated visits, tests and required rest prescribed by those monitoring me. Please rest assured that there is nothing uber-serious going on, and that everything will be ok. I am still working on new pieces and the business as we know it, is still moving forward. However, it is certainly affecting how often I can make appearances in outdoor markets and other venues. As always, please keep an eye on our twitter and facebook accounts for updates on when/where exactly we’re going to be setting up as we do have some venues lined up at the end of this summer and fall. In the meantime, my husband will be taking over most of the blog duties (on top of his web duties) as well as shipping mail orders from our online store for the next several months and he will keep you guys posted. I’m sure he’ll do a great job – so give him a chance to win you over. Thank you for your continued love, support and appreciation.

Up until last year, everytime I used the internet I’d be browsing with Mozilla’s Firefox. Ever since my husband upgraded our iMac to Snow Leopard however, I noticed that Firefox got slower and slower and is taking longer to start up. I wonder why this is happening. We cleared all of our extensions and did a fresh install, but still got the same lagging performance. I’ve started using Google’s Chrome a lot more recently and sometimes Safari. In the meantime, I’ve been poking around about Firefox to find out if others were having similar issues. I’m pretty psyched to see Firefox 4 is coming out and I hope that will fix a lot of their slowness. In my research, I also discovered that even though a Red Fox is used in the logo, the original name “Firefox” referred to the Red Panda – an endangered animal.

Yup, you guessed it – it inspired me to whip up my newest piece “Making New Friends” adding to the growing Endangered Animals Library. Although they are solitary, nocturnal animals – I figured companionship is important for all. Who doesn’t like having friends? So not only is this piece dedicated to the plight of the Red Panda, it is also a big shout out to all of my friends, especially the new ones I meet every day while I spread news about endangered species. Note cards and Art Prints are on the way, look for them soon – even on Firefox.