Dan Bolles, editor of Seven Days VT, wrote to me in May to ask me to contribute to the annual cartoon issue in July. Of course! This was a week before I would leave for Greece for a month. I proposed several topics, and Dan asked me to write about the Champlain Parkway, a project that has changed the South End neighborhood of Burlington where I live— the comic explains how. The day before my daughter Helen and I were to fly to Athens, the flight was cancelled and re-booked for 3 days later. I used the extra time to draft the comic, then packed my suitcase with inking supplies, portable light table, and white-out. Over several afternoons at the hotel after days in the field at Kenchreai, I inked this page, I realized I’d made a mistake on the map, made the correction on a separate sheet, and inked that, too. Two weeks later, when I arrived at the INSTAP Study Center for East Crete I scanned the inked pages with help of Lauren the librarian, made corrections in Procreate on my iPad and typed the text. Some of this I did on the short flight back from Crete to Athens, and that evening sent the inked draft to Dan. I colored the comic on the flight back to Vermont, and turned it in the day after my return (in a jet lagged fog). After several rounds of edits, and the page was published on July 8, not long after the road was opened for the first time, and together with an article about the Champlain Parkway. Now I take the new road whenever I can. I’m a fan!

Drawing the familiar streets of my neighborhood and the swoop of the new road and all these tiny Vermont trees and houses while listening to palm fronds rasp in an Aegean zephyr I suppose means I can inhabit two worlds at the same time, at least temporarily. Thank you SevenDaysVT for the chance!