Yippee, the new edition of the Feeling Good Cards is out, with my illustration on the back of the cards and my graphic design on the box. This summer I’ll have them for sale at this site!
Gloria Blum first created the cards back in the 1970’s while working with developmentally disabled teenagers. She found that they opened up to her if she asked them questions they enjoyed answering. She collected the questions and had them printed up as a set of flash cards, and soon had created a cottage industry, first within her own profession, and soon to other related counseling and helping professions. She then discovered that the questions make a fun party game for people of all ages, and determined to sell the cards to the general public.
When she ran low on her original printing, she asked me to re-design the box and make an illustration for the backs of the cards, drawing in a cartoon style a wide variety of people, all having a good time. In the drawing, I included her and her collaborator and husband, Dr. Barry Blum MD. He’s the one playing a bass balalaika and she’s singing with her arms upraised, as they often do in their Hawaiian klezmer band, Kona’s Traveling Jewish Wedding, which released a bewitching CD album a few years ago called Shaloha Oy (the title track being a minor-key up-tempo version of Queen Liliou’okalani’s famous Aloha ‘Oe).
Here’s a sample question card! I’d love to answer that one.
Here’s Gloria singing with the klezmer band. With her divinely passionate Yiddish spirit, she’s the Janis Joplin of klezmer.
Here’s the whole band, at a performance a few years ago. Gloria is singing a duet with Ros Cohen.
Alicia Bay Laurel 