Poem: The Arrival

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The Arrival

On a smooth spring day
    they alighted
    like the wispy feet of a wren
    hugging the twig of my upper lip —

the descent of my mother’s pout-wrinkles
    there in the rear view mirror
    on me.

I thought perhaps I could perpetuate
    a smile
    from then
      on

spreading them
    as beautifully as a bird’s wing in flight
    across my face
    and no one
    would be the wiser.

Then it came to me

that we are given every feather
    for flight

though we tuck them in
    so deftly
       satinly
          shiningly

All the feathers
    there at birth!
    Even in the lentil bean
    in the womb
    all the feathers

for flying arcs
    across the face of the sun
    setting as he does
    taking with him
    the rays of our young smile

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Poem: Endless

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my mom

 

Endless

Fingering the past and its memories
like beads of stone

or bone, like the ivory necklace
of your mother’s you wore,

its carved spheres, milky with river
filigrees, soapy soft,

lotioned almost
like your face skin before bed

oh pressing mine, kissing me good night on my
adolescent pillow

where I was growing, thrumming into myself
drawing pictures of women’s bodies

the way I wanted mine to be
under

forbidden bone, outlawed tusk
engraved for a beautiful woman

to wear upon her neck
hanging down on her bosom

circling, rotating, revolving
in the endless orbit of a life

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

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Hollywood's Cutest Kids 2011

Hollywood's Cutest Kids 2011

It can be seen that Hollywood's cutest kids are not only genetically blessed by their famous parents but also own label-heavy wardrobes. Let's see the most-wanted celebrity kids before they grow up.

Suri Cruise, daughter of Tom and Katie, is the favorite adorable target for paparazzi since she was born.

The Beckham Boys
The Beckham boys - Brooklyn, 10, Romeo, 6, and Cruz, 4 are just perfect.

The twins made a rare public appearance

Vivien and Knox
It is rare to see the entire Brangelina family. Recently, Angelina and Brad are seen leisurely walking in the street of New Orleans, Louisiana along with six children Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, Knox, and Vivienne over the weekend. The famous Jolie-Pitt twins, Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon seem to have the most perfect genes from their hot parents. They are absolutely adorable and gorgeous.

Leni - Heidi Klum

Like mother like daughter, Leni looks totally adorable and cute.

Little heartbreaker Levi Alves McConaughey is definitely “Cutest Baby Alive”

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt
No cutest Hollywood kid list is completed without Shiloh - daughter of the golden couple. At the age of five, Shiloh is interested in dressing like a little tomboy kid.

Sheraphina Affleck
2-year-old Sheraphina Affleck, daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck
.

Levi McConaughey
While Daddy Matthew McConaughey is named the “Sexiest Man Alive”…

Thomas - Jack Black
The son of American comedian and actor Jack Black looks like an angle.

Ruby - Tobey Maguire
"Spiderman" star Tobey Maguire has an adorable daughter Ruby Sweetheart.

Violet Affleck

The oldest daughter of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck is the happiest child in Hollywood. Voilet is always seen with a smile on her face.

Woman in Pajamas Walks on Water

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These are the days of miracle and wonder . . .  ~ Paul Simon

It fell for days and days, the snow. In the colder cold, it was down feathers, or the powder in my mother’s plastic Coty bowl, from where she doused her puff and smoothed it onto the velvet petals of her cheeks, chin, nose and forehead. I feel the silk of her good-night kiss. And smell her: freesia.

This is the habitat of the deer.

We weigh the same, the young doe and I, when she is not with child. I will never be with child again, but in this moment, we walk the same path. Next year, a fawn will come to her, from her, out of her, under her, and quickly learn to walk around her! This is how we rise and fall.

But today, I am the one who walks on water. See, her hoof inserts itself into the glove of snow. But not mine.

With March come warmer days, still cold nights, and freezing rain. The footprints the deer and I had left become crusted in frozen traps of treachery, enough to twist an ankle. Today, the surface next to our tracks is solid, and my human feet in boots skip across it like white lightning on the horizon in summer. But not the doe’s. See how her hoof inserts itself into the glove of winter, and kisses the ground.

Which of us is not a miracle?

These are the days of miracle and wonder

This is the long distance call

The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all

The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky

These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby, don't cry

Don't cry

    ~ from "The Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon

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The way I want Christmas

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     The way I want Christmas is withdrawn, but attentive, and giving. Like a woman. During holiday hullabaloo the thrusts of commerce, and even sometimes of the church, impose upon the quiet of inner space. Any day of the year, whether in a state of joy, sorrow, or even turmoil, I want to rise and fall gently on the day's currents--nose flared, eyes raised, hands unclasped, ears unlocked. But some of the air is raucous, rank, deafening, false, and deadening. At home I pull down Christmas tubs and unsnap lids. Out with the ribbons and glitter spirals the remembered scent of oranges studded with cloves. It is a woman’s fragrance, the earth. My mother.

     And out comes the 1955 Christmas songbook, dull matte blue with worn embossed singing angels on the cover, its spine reinforced with duct tape by my father. Mom’s dark eyes ignite in candlelight at the mahogany piano, and blue-ridge vein rivers roll over her knuckles while she plays Go Tell It on the Mountain. Hip-to-hip on the needlepointed piano bench we sit where she has also taught me to play in hours of tearful frustration. But as if turning out the lamps and lighting the tree and candles illuminates a different piano and alternate faces, during these easy-going Christmas carol hours there is no tension, no mother-daughter resistance or pride. She plays and plays, and I sing, and turn the page to the next. The music floats in flakes of effortless snowfall. Many songs are foreign, strange, and special, never appearing in a church hymnal. They are haunting in their folk lyrics and minor keys. They are of woods and tender brown animals. They bloom with holly leaves and stars. They rasp with bagpipe and fiddle. They are blue, cold nights of Croatian shepherds, French rushes of wings, and a hand hewn rocking cradle of Czechoslovakia. They are whisper-sung by a woman in front of a fire, baby at her breast, fat cheeks aglow and rosy-warm, drinking the quieting calm that streams from inside a woman. Christmas is my mother’s lullaby.

TO SAY BEFORE GOING TO SLEEP

I would like to sing someone to sleep,

to sit beside someone and be there.

I would like to rock you and sing softly

and go with you to and from sleep.

I would like to be the one in the house

who knew: The night was cold.

And I would like to listen in and listen out

into you, into the world, into the woods.

The clocks shout to one another striking,

and one sees to the bottom of time.

And down below one last, strange man walks by

and rouses a strange dog.

And after that comes silence.

I have laid my eyes upon you wide;

and they hold you gently and let you go

when something stirs in the dark.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(from The Book of Images, translated by Edward Snow in 1991)

Sleep, little Jesus, my treasure, my blessing,

While Mary comforts Thee, tender, caressing.

Lullaby, little one, in loving arms lying,

Guarding my darling and stilling Thy crying.

~ Polish Lullaby
(translated by Henry W. Simon)
from my mom's Treasury of Christmas Songs and Carols,
which I posted about previously here

Please listen to Edyta Górniak tenderly whisper-sing this lullaby in Polish, 

called 'Lulajże Jezuniu', here

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End of Life: a villanelle

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My mom passed away in 1997. She was a pastor's wife, servant of God, mom of eight, church pianist, director of the church music program, Bible teacher, and a counselor to many. Because of living in and for the church, her life was a performance. She felt she had to be perfect, set a spotless example of behavior and attitude, and never cause anyone to "stumble". (I'm sure my dad and the congregation thought so too.) Because of this I believe that she was not free, though I think she was fulfilled and truly a very happy person with a vivacious personality. Picture her in high school on stage as Jo in Little Women getting the letter in the mail when her book was published, raising the letter in triumph, glee, and a little bit of feminine tomboy Wheee! She remained that jubilant girl her entire life, almost.

After my dad died in 1995, and Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, I wrote this poem. As her mind and life slipped away, I hoped and dreamed of an opening into freedom for her, maybe in another dimension, perhaps after death. I wondered what her life would be like if she was free to fail, or to do anything she wanted?

The form of this poem is a villanelle, which starts with a tercet (a three-line stanza), the first and third lines of which establish the refrain. As these lines are repeated, their tone, meaning and intensity build through the poem. I chose this form with its fairly strict pentameter and rhyme, and its refrain (like a hymn) for this woman who had dedicated her life to God and his laws and then at the end of life, lapsed into the tormented repetitions of one who has lost her memory and mental footing. There are links below the poem to find out more about the interesting poetic form called villanelle, including some famous poems of this form.

End of Life

Villanelle to my mother, who has submitted

to the forms of others her whole life

After the applause evaporates to nothing,

years from now when dust protects the stage,

you will take a bow, your roses trailing

crooked stems, those old sonatas failing,

yet your mind will muster and engage.

After the applause evaporates to nothing,

over seats prodigiously enchanting,

frail, with bones diminished due to age,

you will take a bow, your roses trailing

thorny courses down your arms and nailing

telegrams upon your palms with rage.

After the applause evaporates, to nothing

will your face upturn, to no forbidding

voice assent, too near, the door of the cage.

You will take a bow, your roses trailing

bird-size heads, their life no longer jailing

them within their small equipage.

After the applause evaporates to nothing

you will take a bow, your roses trailing.

~ Ruth M., 1995

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

To see how the structure of the villanelle works, go here. To read four beautiful and well known examples of villanelles by Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath and Edward Arlington Robinson, go here. To hear Dylan Thomas recite "Do not go gentle into that good night" in his lush, melodic voice, go here.

If you write poetry, but you haven't tried writing a villanelle, it can be a gratifying challenge!
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My mother tells me it was good

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My mother tells me it was good

Out of the spine of the piano my mother

is calling, and for the first time her voice to me

is jazz. Through my headphones

and a black man’s touch on the keys and strings

I hear her -- the tingles and flashes, rolls, sparks

and hints that used to fill the white church

under the shadow of the cross, telling me

There is more to piano music than "Jesus Saves"

and more to my mother than what I know.

In crystalline notes of his, I recognize her timed pause,

a drop from an icicle melting in the sun

that falls the moment just after you know you want it.

In duet, a saxophone’s smoke rises to the sun,

helping it warm my mother’s piano confessions to me

drop by drop -- those revelations I envisioned, prayers

she breathed in a jazz club before she found God,

suspended, frozen in the veil of her past, yet whispered

through chinks -- in winks and inklings to me

on the black and white hymned keys for the someday, this day,

when I feel their beating hum in the melting icicle of my spine.

~ Ruth M.

Hear a podcast of this poem here.

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Back to School Lessons

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"I'm going to go lay down."

"Just what are you going to lay down?"

"Oh. I mean I'm going to go lie down."

Having a mom who was at times a substitute English teacher (among many other talents and training as a music teacher) meant that eventually, grammatically correct words fell from our lips as easily as maple leaves floating from black branches in September. To this day my three sisters like to hash out grammar questions and pet peeves. It's fun to listen. Lay and Lie are among their bugaboos. Not too many people get confused and say a chicken lies an egg. But when it comes to going to the couch for a nap, a lot of people say they're going to go lay down. Fingernails on a chalk board!

The fall semester has taken off in the English department like a big booming (and creaky) barge, and no doubt professors will be honking their grammar horns along the way, at lays that should be lies, thats that ought to be whiches, and infers, which should most emphatically be implies. The latter was one I had to learn from a professor honking at my term paper in which I wrote that I had implied such-and-such from the passage. He happens to be my boss now. (Embarrassing implication.)

But there is a far more important lesson with lay and lie for me to remember as the semester commences.  This barge will pick up cargo as it lumbers down the river. I need to load up my backpack and get off on the riverbank every now and then, lay down the big heavy load of the day, and lie down in the September grass. When I'm stressed, it helps at the end of the day when I've lain down (and laid down), to close my eyes, and practice this visualization:

There is a free-flowing stream running from my head down through the center of my body, and out my toes into the Earth. As I feel my muscles relax (especially my shoulders), I scan my mind for the burdens weighing me down. One by one, I place these worrisome morsels in the flow of my stream and watch them float away, down my body, and into the Earth's soft loam. When I've donated all my burdens to the Earth, I visualize Her transforming them back into something alive and nurturing, back up the stream in me. (Ohh, I thank Her.) If I haven't already drifted off in the stream of sleep, I am at least relaxed.

Won't you lie down, in this September grass? What about the ants, you ask? No worries. They don't mind working while we lay around, I mean lie around. There's plenty of room: Lay your burden down, and lie here in the grass with me, Bishop and James Taylor. I mean, with Bishop, James Taylor and me. We're so small and the world's so vast . . .

Scoot over, Bish.

I shot these photos of Bishop two years ago;

the leaves have only just begun to fall and are not this far along

September Grass

by James Taylor

Well, the sun's not so hot in the sky today

And you know I can see summertime slipping on away

A few more geese are gone, a few more leaves turning red

But the grass is as soft as a feather in a featherbed

So I'll be king and you'll be queen

Our kingdom's gonna be this little patch of green

Won't you lie down here right now

In this September grass

Won't you lie down with me now

September grass

Oh the memory is like the sweetest pain

Yeah, I kissed the girl at a football game

I can still smell the sweat and the grass stains

We walked home together. I was never the same.

But that was a long time ago

And where is she now? I don't know

Won't you lie down here right now

In this September grass

Won't you lie down with me now

September grass

Oh, September grass is the sweetest kind

It goes down easy like apple wine

Hope you don't mind if I pour you some

Made that much sweeter by the winter to come

Do you see those ants dancing on a blade of grass?

Do you know what I know? that's you and me, baby

We're so small and the world's so vast

We found each other down in the grass

Won't you lie down with me right here

September grass

Won't you lie down with me now

In this September grass

Lie down

Lie down

Lie down

Lie down

(repeat)

Won't you lie down here right now

In this September grass

Won't you lie down here now

In this September grass

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Family (H)art

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Come in, come in, just follow the crowds (hehe). I hope you don’t mind if I indulge myself. I have created a gallery of visual art by members of my family. It’s my gift to me mostly, an acknowledgement of the love of growing up with Art as a recurring character in our family tree. It’s long, but you can be grateful that every single member of my family is not represented. In total we number 70 living souls, if I count correctly (math is not my strongest subject), but I am only including the visual artists, several of whom have passed on. I'm sharing 15 artists in all. I am defining visual art narrowly, as what you can hang on a wall (except for one exception, one of Lesley’s). Please click on the images if you’d like to see the details enlarged. I’ll start from oldest to youngest, except me. I’ll be last, but it doesn’t mean I’m saving the best for it. I’m just trying to be polite. Of course just look at pictures if you don't want to read all the information about the artists. I wouldn't blame you one bit, I know you're busy. This is documentation for my family and me as much as anything.

DISCLAIMER: I took photographs of many of these images, or the artists did, so there might be glare, or distortions. Blur your eyes when necessary.

Welcome, won’t you come in? Would you like an audio guide? They’re only $5. Or you can leave your photo ID. (I don’t really have an audio guide, I was just kidding.)

Corn, by Grandma Elizabeth

1 Grandma Elizabeth  b. 1870 d. 1957. My dad’s mother was 47 when Dad was born (and his dad, also a minister, was 70 when Dad was born and fought in the Civil War!), and I do not know if I met her. She died in Charlottesville, Virginia less than a year after I arrived. When my older siblings knew her, she was deaf and used an ear horn to hear. I know little else. Were we ever surprised when Dad was dying gently on a hospice bed in his dining room in 1995, and someone found this corn painting of Grandma’s in the attic. We had never seen nor heard of it, or that she was an artist. Lucky me, it’s hanging on the wall in our bedroom. (We don't have a formal dining room, where it would be more appropriate.) Sorry about the glare and distortion, I tried to photoshop it out and just couldn't get all of it.

2 Grandma Olive  b. 1891 d. 1960. I’ve posted about Grandma Olive, my mom’s mother, many times at this blog. I have no memory of her, she died when I was 3 or 4. After graduating from the Art Institute in Chicago, Olive was a professional artist/designer/illustrator in the 1920s and 30s. She designed clothes for Vogue and wallpaper for Thibault. Her pen and ink drawings illustrated World Book encyclopedias and newspaper ads. You know that curious little sepia girl studying life from my sidebar? It’s one of hers, from a page in World Book, below. In this gallery I’ve also included a cabinet she painted that now lives in our family room. Mom said her mother used to go tromping on the streets of NYC looking for dilapidated bargains and would bring them home and doll them up. Below is also her cover illustration for the Bayonne Times (she resided in Bayonne, New Jersey) when the NY Holland Tunnel opened – the world’s first vehicular tunnel.

Illustration in World Book Encyclopedia, Grandma Olive

The "bastard" cabinet (so-called by an antiques dealer
who said it mixed many styles)
that Grandma Olive rescued and painted

Cover and detail in the Bayonne Times, on the event

of the opening of the Holland Tunnel, by Grandma Olive

3 Uncle Jimmie  b. 1906 d. 1994. My dad’s 10-year-older brother. The subject of a poem I posted. Uncle Jimmie had his own printing company, and he used to send us calendars at Christmas with prints from his carved woodblocks. Woodblock prints require a long, arduous and painstaking process, with a different block carved for each color, leaving the rest of the design uncarved and left for another block, then having to align everything perfectly.

Woodblock prints, by Uncle Jimmie 

4 Mom  b. 1916 d. 1997. Though my mom was a musical artist (pianist, choir director and composer), not so much a visual one, I’m including sheet music from an operetta she wrote based on Alice in Wonderland, which I only just learned about from my niece Shari, herself a splendid pianist, who inherited her grandma's handwritten sheet music. It has Mom's maiden name on it, but I have no idea when she wrote it. I think the flourishes of musical note flags are lyrically and visually beautiful. I sat by my mom on the piano bench as a toddler while she composed, watching her play a phrase, then transcribe the notes onto staff paper, painstakingly, one phrase at a time. Eventually I started pounding out melodies after hearing them repeated so often, surprising everyone. Too bad I didn't turn into a prodigy.

My mom's composition of the operetta, Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, never published

5 Dad  b. 1917 d. 1995. The image of him at right is the day he pronounced Don and me Husband & Wife. In his early days as a minister, my father supplemented his income with signs he painted. He was a fine pen and ink artist as well and created his own bookplate, below. Engravers duplicated the image on his and Mom's gravestone. Hart was his name, but it was also an animal (another word for deer) in a beautiful Psalm verse that represented his heart for God: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, oh God.  ~ Psalm 42:1.

Dad's pen and ink bookplate.

Mom and Dad's grave stone, with Dad's art work
(that's the headstone of my childhood Dr. Garlock behind)

6 Boots, aka Ginnie  My sister.

I grew up watching Bootsie draw. She drew this girl very early, in high school I think. Now she uses Soul Girl as her avatar at In Soul, her blog, after I suggested it, since it so perfectly represents her spirit. She is also an inspired photographer, and I am including a photo of windmills, one of her favorite symbols. She lives near Amsterdam with her wife Astrid, where they are legally married. (When oh when will we catch up in the U.S.?) I like that both these images are about wind. Her blog is In Soul and her photoblog is Hart & Soul, where she unfolds her beautiful eye and insights into life.

Soul Girl, by Ginnie

Windmills, by Ginnie

7 Bennett  My brother, who passed away in 1996.

I’ve blogged about Bennett a lot. I think there is no one who has shaped my world view more than he did, eight years my senior. He loved to shoot rustic scenes in Nova Scotia and New England. He shot this Greek Orthodox priest in Greece in the 1970s. (Do you think they were related?) Bennett died before the advent of digital photography, and I think he would have loved it, though he also had his own dark room and loved to spend hours deep into the night developing prints. I have no way of knowing if this print I photographed was one he was happy with, since he discarded so many out of perfectionism. My photo of it also does not do it justice, and one of these days we’ll need to scan it or its negative (I think one of my nephews Paul or Todd, see below, might have Ben’s negatives). This photo, which he made a very large print of, won grand prize at a photography show, and was breathtaking. I have also included the poster he used to advertise his work. The grasshopper was his “avatar.” (Again, sorry for the glare on that one.)

Greek Orthodox priest, by Bennett

Bennett's photography show poster

8 John My brother.

John and Bennett are in the photo at right at the Acropolis in 1970 -- John is on the left; click to see their handsome faces better. John is my closest sibling in age, four years my senior. We spent many hours at the kitchen table sketching, and I was always amazed at his abilities. Strange story of synchronicity: As I was preparing this post last weekend, Don found the following charcoal John did of our dad in our barn in my dad’s things, quite by accident, accompanied by the touching poem. In a quick phone call to John he told me he believes he created them together sometime in his teens. I'll type out the poem here, because it touches me and expresses something of my own sense of things growing up.

You were tall and I was small—

I gazed wide-eyed at your legs and feet.

You’d hear the ring, then answer the call

and head off down the street.

(I tried, when you walked,

to follow along, but your steps were hard to reach).

And it seemed to me you never talked,

except to pun or preach.

Your silent side was good for me;

it helped me grow inside.

I watched and listened, and I could see

the heart you couldn’t hide.

I remember well one hurtful day

how you loved me in your quiet way.

You stood at my door with tears in your eyes;

your heart reached for mine with pain-laden sighs.

When I was liddle I watched you diddle—always on your knee;

You were tall and I was small, but I knew it was just for me,

‘cause after awhile—

you’d smile.

~ John

charcoal of Dad, poem to Dad, by John

9 Todd  My nephew – my sister Nancy’s son.

Todd is a web and graphic designer, among many other things. The first image, titled “Esther,” is a pen and ink drawing he created in high school. Todd has also started a photography business doing photo shoots with models (his web site is here). The second image of Margaret was shot during a photo session at our farm.

Esther, by Todd

Margaret, by Todd, shot at our farm

10 Paul  My nephew -- my brother Jim’s son.

Paul's four kids are often his photo subjects. Paul provides design for software professionally and is also quite successful selling his photos at iStock on the side. (His best seller? A hospital emergency sign.) I fell in love with these two portraits of his kids Lydia, Eli, Aden and Clara, when he posted them at his flickr photostream, taken at our family cottage about a month ago. In fact, these images were what got me inspired to do this family gallery. They remind me of a cut-out silhouette we had done at Knott’s Berry Farm when Lesley was little (right).

Clara and Aden, by Paul

Lydia, Eli, Clara and Aden, by Paul, at our cottage

11 Mark My nephew -- Ginnie/Bootsie’s son.

Mark shot this spontaneous family portrait of us on the frozen lake over New Year’s one year. That’s our family cottage on the hill in the upper left of the photo. Mark is a computer programmer and also studied photography at the Maine Photographic Workshops. I’m trying to remember why we were smiling so geekily in this photo, I think we had just been skating around and slipping on the sliding ice like spazzes. We’ve paused for Mark and are holding on to each other for dear life. Oh! I just noticed . . . that scarf hugging Lesley's head is one of the only things I've ever knitted.

Family Portrait, by Mark

12 Rachel My niece – my brother John’s daughter.

Rachel lives in Utah with her husband Swede and is dying to have her own studio to create art again. She teaches English and math to special needs students in middle school. I just love this acrylic Paris painting, her own version of Starry Night. Don't Swede and Rachel look like they were just tango-ing?

Paris, by Rachel

13 Lesley   My daughter.

Lesley went to art school in Detroit (College for Creative Studies), earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design, and a minor in Fibers. I have some gorgeous wearable art she has made. When she has time and energy after working very hard as a commercial interior designer in NYC, she knits, makes beautiful jewelry and creates re-styled clothes from vintage. I have included her charcoal self-portrait from art school, an interesting technique of covering the paper/canvas with charcoal then rubbing out the drawing with an eraser. Below that is a photo of a retail space she spent about 18 months designing with her boss at Spin Design where she still works, including the design of custom furnishings. I am especially fond of the gold mesh chandelier "sheaths." It is the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s newly opened flagship store on 57th Street in NYC. I think the least expensive watch they sell is about $10,000, so please do browse -- you might bump into Arnold Schwarzenegger or Meryl Streep, who are AP customers. I like the juxtaposition of Lesley’s bohemian art school self and the posh watch store.

Self, by Lesley

Audemars Piguet flagship store, designed by Spin Design (by Lesley and her boss)

14 Peter   My son. 

Like my mom, Peter is a remarkable musician (guitarist, arranger). But he is also an artist and amateur photographer. This painting is one he did in Advanced Placement Studio Art in high school, in the manner of Peter Max. The photograph below that is one he shot in Hilo, Hawaii. Peter continually inspires me with his photographs and also excels at videography. (The photo of Peter and me is from a few years ago.)

Purty Gerty, by Peter

Hilo puddle, by Peter

15 Me My self.

I can draw some, but I don’t apply discipline or practice, so just sketching something once or twice a year means I haven’t developed my skills. The sketches span decades: a young man in a magazine while I studied abroad, Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain a couple of years back, an imagined girl 20 years ago, and a drawing for a Christmas card around that same time. If this is not your first visit to this blog, you know I love to take photos. The first photograph below is probably a favorite of mine, shot early one morning in October 2006, when I went out on Horseshoe Lake where our family cottage is, in Lesley’s kayak, with my little point and shoot Olympus. I watched the moon set and the sun rise in that two hour float. If you look very closely, you can see geese on the water at the left. The next photo is the same lake, same morning, the sun rising in fog, just about 30 minutes later. It may look silent, but dozens of geese were honking (like vuvuzelas). It is a strange feeling to hear something so loud and close, that is invisible.

Sketches, by me

two photos of Horseshoe Lake

top: moon setting -- can you see the geese in the mist at the left near the horizon?

bottom: 30 minutes later, sunrise

by me

Well, that's it! Thank you very much for visiting my family gallery today. I know it was long. Bravo for getting down to here. You can put your audio guide thingie over there by the door before you leave. Now the sun is up, and I hope you found some visual pleasure in the comfort of your chair.

There is more artistic talent in my family, including Nelson who designs kitchens, Susan who plays piano like a goddess, Nancy who decorates houses that should be in magazines, Jim who has skilled craftsman hands, and their many children, and their children, who are fragrant with artistic talent as well.

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