Happy Birthday Baby!

50 FUN Facts About Ron Lugo, Birthday Boy

1. On his honeymoon in Maui in 1997, Ron aced a HOLE IN ONE at the Kaanapali Golf Course. He’s on the boards, in brass for eternity.

2. Was a gymnast in school and can still do the splits.

3. Ron is the father of the 24^th and last grandchild of the Lugo family.

4. Ron is the 7^th child of eight.

5. Ron was born in Chicago, south side, baby.

6. Ron was a diver in school and can still do a back flip off the diving board.

7. His favorite bands are Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Jet, Oasis, etc., etc., etc.

8. His favorite movie is a tossup between The Terminator, Back to the Future and the Snapper.

9. His first job was putting together engines.

10. Played pickup hockey as a kid in Chicago and still plays a mean ice hockey.

11. Works on Carlos Santana’s Volvo.

12. Won the “Sexy Dance Contest” in Cabo San Lucas, July 2006.

13. Saved a man’s life with his hydraulic jack, who was pinned under a bobcat.

14. Shot a gopher with a pellet gun.

15. Studied ballet.

16. Dressed up as a woman on Halloween once and almost got a date. With a straight man.

17. Drank with a man in a kilt under the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Australia.

18. Was the only guy on his bachelor party fishing trip that didn’t puke outside the Golden Gate.

19. One of his nicknames is McGyver. He can fix anything with almost nothing.

20. Makes the best BBQ chicken legs on the planet.

21. His fantasy job is a major league baseball player.

22. His favorite teams are the 49ers, Athletics, Warriors and any team Jake plays on.

23. Has been told he looks like Claude Van Dam, Troy Aikman (hates the Cowboys!) and Bill Clinton (they share the same birthday!)

24. Has a donor ACL in his right knee due to a basketball injury.

25. Swam with dolphins in Cancun.

26. Swam in the Phosphoresce Bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico. You must do this once in your life.

27. As a baby his nickname was Eisenhower.

28. Loves to dance.

29. Thinks fishing is God’s sport.

30. Knows the rules of the sport of cricket.

31. Can flip his eyelids inside out, guaranteed to make you sick.

32. Has no tattoos or piercings but lots of scars.

33. Was the only one of his “dogtown” friends in L.A. in the 70s that could do a skateboard hand stand.

34. Apprenticed as a carpenter with his Dad.

35. Was an altar boy at Ascension Episcopalian Church in Chicago.

36. Saved countless life and limb by convincing people to buy Volvos that previously drove little tin can imports.

37. Cried when his first son Jeff was born.

38. Cried when his twin girls were born. He held Monica first, then Amanda.

39. Cried when his second son was born and then said “NO MORE.”

40. Is an unbeatable Scrabble player.

41. Is a cat person.

42. Loves to play “Tin Man” on his guitar.

43. Is three-quarters Puerto Rican Spanish and one-quarter Irish.

44. Thinks in a previous life he was a WWII soldier.

45. Ron has played at the Olympic Club and if you have to ask….

46. Can do a “waterstart” on a windsurf board. His wife taught him.

47. Finally gave up snowboarding and is back on regular skis. He was almost a 50 year old snowboarder.

48. Loves camping of any kind: backpacking, car camping, pop-top camping, four wheel driving, tent camping, backyard camping.

49. His son Jake is a dual citizen between the U.S. and Austraila and if Ron lives there for more than a year, he will be, too.

50. Thanks for celebrating. Ron loves his family and friends more than anything else! Here's to five decades of Ron Lugo and five more!

I am an artist

I am an artist.

I always have been and I always will be. It's just taken me this bloody long to figure it out and actually do something about it.

When very little, when asked the omnipresent question, "what are you going to be when you grow up?" I gave anwers that raised many an adult eyebrow. My answers consisted of, what I thought at the time to be, very wise choices: mermaid (my very first choice) , treasure hunter, go-go dancer. With concern in their voice, the well-meaning adults (afterall, any adult who even wants to engage in conversation with a 7 year-old has got to have heart and soul) would reply, "hmm, I see, have you thought about a nurse or a teacher?" To me that sounded as ridiculous as my answers did to them. Life was about adventure, other worlds, music, games, and fun like any healthy kid should think. But, the question kept coming and the eyebrows kept raising and I kept on thinking I just might be a mermaid when I grew up.

Then, as a pre-adolescent, when the question was asked, I started to say, "I don't know." Because I didn't. I was old enough to know I couldn't be a mermaid anymore but not old enough to know who I was. Or frankly really care. All my options (which pretty much hadn't changed since I was seven) seemed surrealistic: a nurse? (no I couldn't even stand bloody dried band aids), a teacher? (no, what was I going to teach? honestly!). In the very early 70s, girls were just starting to realize that they could be some of the amazing grown ups that boys could be: astronauts, race car drivers, professional basketball players but just only.

The one thing I loved to do more than reading books or playing outside or watching tv or playing with my brothers and friends was drawing. I loved to draw. I wasn't particularly good, I didn't show any unnatural abilities, I just loved to draw. Then I branched out and learned macrame and candle making and I was hooked.

In the summer of 1972, while staying at our summer house in Shelter Island, in the back seat of our family station wagon, after a long day of collecting shells to adorn sand candles, I had the epiphany.
"I know what I want to be when I grow up! I'm going to live here year round and make macrame candle holders and sand candles and paintings of the beach and I'm going to sell them to the summer tourists and and be a beach comber the rest of the year." I really did say it in one sentence. My parents said, "that's nice love," not in a condescending way but in a reserved supportive way that a parent does when they have a rather over-imaginative child. I was off to the races.

Of course summer ended and I went back to school and falling leaves and snow and an increasing interest in friends, clothes and boys. But I kept drawing.

My mother bought me a nice new lemon yellow (my favorite color at the time) sweatshirt to wear to school on cool days. I was a fussy dresser, I wanted nothing scratchy, tight or that rode up, which pretty much meant all nice looking clothes. My mother desperately looked for ways to combat my terrible habit of going to school looking like a hobo. My poor mother, my adolescence turned me away from matching dresses with my dolly to jeans and sweatshirts. So, she thought at least if I was going to wear sweats they could be new and pretty colored.

So, I took the aforementioned sweatshirt, took my beloved box of markers, took my two best friends and closed my bedroom door. Minutes later I came out of the room, proudly showing off my latest work of art. My mother was crestfallen, but God bless her not angry. I'd managed to take the one thing I would wear that wasn't horrible and turn it into little girls graffiti. We drew flowers, peace signs, hearts, and words and phrases such as "I love D.C.," (if you don't know who that was, in 1972, poor you but I'll give you a hint: I think I love you).

That was when I think my mother finally took my art seriously. But that, dear reader, is another story. But I will write later about my first art show and my sad and confused path away from art.

Now, I said I'm an artist but I didnt' say I'm a good one, so don't expect to see my art hanging on any walls in the city in the near future. In fact, my "portfolio" is spotty, erratic, unpracticed, unseen and immature. But being an artist doesn't necessarily mean having a professional portfolio or shows or commissions. In fact, art has so many different definitions..... well, let's just say I want to spread truth and beauty. Ack, I'm starting to sound like Superartist, "truth, beauty and the American way." haha.

So it's come down to, or I'd rather say, up to this: as they say in the real world, those that can't do, teach. So that's why I've decided to teach in addition to work on becoming a better artist. To immerse myself in art, show others the power of art and hopefully, catch a few young artists like I was myself so many decades ago and help them to the right path.

So I've come full circle, albeit a cubist circle, but I've come around. And it feels so deliciously liberating to say it.

I am an artist.