Their e-mail conversation is a feat of storytelling, moving seamlessly from segue to segue, carrying the reader along revealing their personal tapestries of discoveries in life, deaths and near deaths of loved ones, including their animals.

Their conversation is both joyful and poignant. Often, I found myself weeping because their openness about their struggles and pain seemed to be my own.

Their conversation is intimate, one found only between close friends, although in reality, these two men have never met. We are invited into this conversation as if we, too, are really there, as friends listening intensely to their stories. Sometimes questions arise and often, the explanation lies in a flight to the poetry or quotations of others.

There is literally so much to comment on I won’t even begin. This email would become an extended essay.…

I was moved, enlightened, delighted and elevated by the conversation you had with Joseph. It is the serious and sweet dialogue all artists would be honored to have with you. Clearly you made a lasting impact on Joseph—and vice versa.

This discussion, the subject matter and the way you talked about, doesn’t seem to get much attention in the art circles today. And hasn’t for years. But it was common in the Bay area in the late 60s and early 70s. Perhaps I may not be reading the right stuff.

In literature, poetry, spiritual and religious circles it has always be present. I must have 20+ plus books by Wendell Berry. I met in once in SB and got to take him through our museum. Also had a little letter correspondence with him in the mid 90s.

TALKING BEAUTY is a treasure. I shall continue to read this "must have" book, and try to put into practice what I learn.

I really adored reading it! The photos are beautiful, varied and do enrich the text. I†know that this inward journey to Beauty that you take me on is one that I will come back to many times. Really a gem!

Thank you†both for your foresight in undertaking such a unique book, and for the masterful blend of both †personal and timeless wisdom gracing it's pages. Do you have the chance to read it again as well, and perhaps be soothed by it? Especially as your task in 'birthing' it is complete.

Another question that popped up - have you ever actually had the chance to meet David by this time? You must feel awfully close having shared so much of your lives and feelings together.

You can tell David that I fell in love with Leila between pages 39 and 40 ... what a gift of god these children are ... yesterday my 6 year old granddaughter Ella ... sitting on our front porch ... with Padi and her mom and dad (Nicollette and Eli) ... with her great grandmother dying in the bed not 10 feet behind her ... say ... apropos of nothing and yet everything ... says, " we are an expressive family" ... and we are weeping with laughter ... light, love and death's immanent spectre.

I love you Joseph Raffael ... down to the way your hand is perched around Lannis on the picture on page 45 ... just like how you hold your brush … so lovingly in applying the watercolors, your grace is there in every gesture.

And David has given me another frame for those cyclists on our roads up here...I have translated what I saw as pain in their efforts … into something much deeper … thank him ... for his gift to all of us...and for his beautiful lovely family; it makes me love mine even more.