April 29, 2998
Big design meeting this morning at True West. Dan Harshberger driving out from the Beast to join in the fray. Going over new department heads (logos). Some resistance from production over the complexity of the design. Could get bloody.

Brenda and Kevin Stockbridge visited from Kingman last Sunday. Got to talking to Kevin about the family outlaw Blackjack Ketchum. The family (his great-grandmother was married to a Ketchum) has a story that Tom and Sam once took a little kid (I think it was Kevin's kin, he was a Duncan), tucked his pants into his boots and then filled the top of his trousers with silver dollars. They thought that was so funny. I asked Kevin if any of those silver dollars still exist, and he said he's carried one of them every day for a long time. He pulled it out. The date? 1888. Pretty cool.

Got some good sketches going for a running sequence in the Top Secret Project:



Been working for several days on this, hope to go to finish by this weekend:



Proof that productive and creative idea sharing can work for the betterment of Mankind. here's an inner-office exchange between True West staffers:

On Apr 28, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Editor wrote:

For all you dog lovers:

- The Role of Canines In the Ancient Southwest: Hundreds of prehistoric dogs found buried throughout the southwestern United States show that canines played a key role in the spiritual beliefs of ancient Americans, new research suggests. Throughout the region, dogs have been found buried with jewelry, alongside adults and children, carefully stacked in groups, or in positions that relate to important structures, said Dody Fugate, an assistant curator at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
—Meghan Saar

On Apr 28, 2008, at 1:07 PM, Bob Boze Bell wrote:

Gang,
I'd love to put a dog on the cover. I'm not kidding.

—BBB

Our production manager responds:

Calamity Jane?

—Robert Ray, Production Manager

Now this is totally, politically incorrect. Gee, I wonder what the guy who played Moses has to say about this?

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."
—Charlton Heston