Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Lots of Images!


Lake Buel Trees

May 27. 2008

We've been at the lake for the long week-end, mostly bright and cool, and everyone spent time lying on the beach all bundled up and I shot up at the sky and got some trees. David took photos I liked of me and Andy: You can see we're bundled up but happy. Paula Hatch gave us tickets on Saturday night to see the Shakespeare & Company farce Ladies' Man, and on Sunday night we were part of the millions who went to see the next Indiana Jones. Sometimes it's good to be part of the crowd? I worked hard on the manuscript I've been finishing up, and not I'm looking at some busy weeks--when did June get so busy?

Illustrations by Rachel Burgess-- see more at her website.

5-21-08

You find so many nice things on the web-- Rachel Burgess is a young artist with a beautiful nuevo-Victorian style, at least in her books illustrations. Take a look at her website!

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Back from WV

Back from the long drive home from West Virgina. My mom is doing well-- took her cast off and is walking around smartly, taking dog biscuits to her canine friends, etc. etc. We visited with Edith and Margie, made trips to Wal-Mart, ate out, and hiked around East Shinnston. Such green, everywhere, Sideling hill, Shinnston, and then back driving down Prospect Street.

Tomorrow is my talk on 1968 at Ethical Culture, and I'm nervous about it-- had trouble focusing on it while I was down there. Well, after this, I've a pretty low key, for me, span coming up. Looking forward to a good sleep, then get up and complete this-- a way to share, to put us all in a kind of perspective.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Saturday with Art and Horses


More gray-rainy (grainy?) days, but it is also getting densely green. Green beginning to close in overhead as the leaves come out, green underfoot in the yards, already ahead of us grass cutters.

This has been a wide ranging day. Andy and I went up to Montclair to the art show to see the pottery work by young Ethical Culture member Christopher Geissler, and ran into an artist whose work we have on the wall downstairs, Linda Adato -- the sweet "umber" colored "Morning Mail" with a radiator and a chair. Her new work is in color, and reminds me, when she does cityscapes, of Ella Yang , but Adato's are smaller, not oils, some she does now are monoprints, but also etchings. So that was nice, and Chris got interviewed for TV, and Andy bought a cup and a small pitcher. We ate, also in Montclair, at an interesting Turkish restaurant, Lalezar that I enjoyed a lot, drove up to Eagle Rock reservation, looked at the 9/11 memorial with its rather awkward old fashioned art, but a great view-- of fog mostly, today. Then to Garden of Eden, Andy's first visit, and he liked the cheese. And home, and we watched the Kentucky Derby and the Place horse, the only filly in the race, ran her heart out and broke her two front ankles and had to be destroyed. That was a really sad moment--you get excited for an hour because it's the Derby, and then there's this.

Sometimes your feelings are displaced-- or is it that you are caught by the surprise of the one poor horse dying for doing what it was bred and trained to do? The animal is easier to feel than the 3000 names in polished granite. 3000 families' pain is much, much too much?

Someone on the radio earlier this week, was it WBAI's Armand Dimele's show? Anyhow, yes, I think it was, trying to distinguish between Buddhist style compassion where you feel for another's suffering and the kind of empathy where people feel someone else's pain to the point that the empathizer's suffering becomes the real point. That was so interesting to me--when we are young, we often suffer horribly over the terrible things in the world we are just learning about-- we literally ache with the other. But when you are suffering physically, or, say, mourning, it isn't necessarily someone who is groaning in concert with you that you want, is it? The program is here.

Boy, this blog entry sure has a lot of links-- I spend my time now combining writing and looking things up on the web, and then linking to them-- the new world.