A Puggy Piggy Bank

Last spring, the folks at Parnassus Books of Nashville, Tennessee, asked over 100 writers, illustrators, and celebrities to decorate plain, white, ceramic piggy banks for an auction to help Stephanie Appell, the store’s manager of books for young readers, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

After getting my piggy bank, I experimented with pencil and paint, but my pencil smudged and my paint peeled off.

Then I found that the bank’s surface was very nice for carving, so I scraped away my false starts and began to sand and scratch and ink-in some features.

Before long, the pig had turned into a pug - I think because it reminded me of Toches (a.k.a. Tuckus, Tookus, etc.), a fat and funny, snuffling and snorting little dog that had belonged to my friend Madeleine, who I lost to breast cancer last year.

When I liked the way my piggy puggy bank looked, I burnished him with butcher’s wax (which will protect him from getting grubby, but which also gives him a warmer, Toches-like tone), and I sent him back to Nashville.

He and many of his new friends, both ceramic and Parnassian - and even another pug! - were featured on Nashville’s WSMV-TV News. Take a look!

Here’s a link to the whole auction.

And here’s a link to my guy’s page. Why not bid - and bid! and bid! and bid! - for him, or for one or more of his companions? The auction starts today and ends Friday, September 30, 2016!

I think he likes you.