Every year, the Red Bluff Daily News, the local paper, has an ad contest for budding artists in the county schools. Many of the merchants and businesses sign up as sponsors, for whom several students draw an ad. The sponsor then picks the ad he wants to represent him in the issue of the paper that displays the winning ads. From all the ads, the paper picks winners from each age group. To avoid any favoritism, I request that my entrants' works be given me without any names attached. Then I show the pictures to many of my clientele, get their opinions, and make the final choice myself. Here are two of my recent picks:

Winter, 1996 — [A]Manda Null, then a 7th grader, won a grand prize with this entry from Reeds Creek School (10 miles west of town). Daughter of Red Bluff Union High School teacher Fred Null and his wife, Annette, Manda is now blazing through high school with very high marks, dancing leads with the local ballet company, studying and teaching sign language, and hopefully still studying art (the talent of which you can see in this picture). She is now, in 2006, graduating college in Pre-Med.

Spring, 2000 — Ray-Charles Roberts is in the 7th grade at Richfield School, a country school just north of Corning, CA. My first glance at this picture reminded me of my grade-school buddy, Jack Donnan, who had a similar sense of humor and creativity (we all thought he was weird because he liked dinosaurs before the rest of us even knew what they were) and now has a Ph.D. in economics.