Saturday, 22 April 2006
I am alone with my sheep. But they are not alone with me.
—opening lines to a novel discussed in the Brit-com that Judi Dench plays in, As Time Goes By. FYI.
PS. This statue is in Piedmont Park, and commemorates something about the Olympics when they were here in Atlanta….
Saturday, 1 April 2006
Today, we enjoyed a gorgeous spring day, with temps tipping toward summer, but vegetation solidly in spring. We had the additional fortune of spending much of the day with our friends Kay and Dean wandering around Callaway Gardens. While we certainly reveled in the blooms—especially the banks of azaleas and dogwoods scattered below the pines—we also spent considerable time watching languid koi, bream (HUGE “brim”!), and sunning turtles.
John, perhaps a bit gleefully and perhaps a bit disgustedly, pointed out several egregious misspellings in Callaway’s carefully made signs, e.g., restauraunt, bicyles (we speculated that the pronunciation was “bickles”), and their inconsistent use of typefaces.
Saturday, 18 March 2006
Cool this morning, but the azaleas are now coming into bloom in our neighborhood. I promise: pictures some day soon!
Still, I’m more in the mood for visual texture. Like yesterday’s platter, this too is from the Getty Museum. Just imagine the sun’s on your shoulders, and your feet are tired from gallery gazing, and you’re watching the water pour over these narrow, closely laid stones, and feeling your energy return as the mists raised by the ruffled water drift across your face.
Should you prefer a more lively visual, check out the fire swallowing on Anne’s blahg.
Friday, 17 March 2006
Several years ago, John took me to CA to celebrate my b-day, and we spent my day visiting the Getty Museum in LA, and we saw this incredible platter tucked away near the bathrooms. I’m still enamored of it!
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
Over on John’s blog, commenters are raising quite a storm. John wins and the goofball is exposed big time!
Me, lemme remind you that gargoyles are not grotesques, and most of those architectural details many people call gargoyles are grotesques. Gargoyles must deliver water (it’s from the French word for “throat”), yet both often are little statues of varying ugliness.
’Nuff ranting!
Tuesday, 28 February 2006
Antidote to gloomy winter: revisit brilliant summer!—in this case, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior’s south shore in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula.
Monday, 27 February 2006
Phone “tree.”
…a few vain lines in imitation of more learned men. (p. 58)
He lay with the book on his chest, now thinking that he’d always lived his life in hope of gain. When Joe Tenney, a better man, had lived in hope of gifts and giving. (p. 103)
—from Karen Fisher’s “A Sudden Country” (2005, Random House)
Ms. Fisher’s novel is a keeper. The setting is 1847 on the Oregon Trail. Her characters resonate and she reveals their hidden stories in slow, unanticipated pulses. She is very sensitive to the nuances of different cultures and walks of life, the very stuff of anthropology. Lest you imagine that this novel is “soft” and Victorian-kindly, here’re more of her words:
…by fifteen years of age, he’d learned what some of this world’s people could delight in.
He’d seen a Naskapi pull off a captive’s thumbs on long tendons, to string through his own ears for bobs. Seen a line of fires built inside a hall, gone in with the people who sat on benches as though waiting at a theater. Seen captives brought in to run through flames, to have their toes cleaved off with hatchets and be made to run again…he’d seen one night of torture so long and so inspired, so hateless and considerate in its artistry, as had left him sure the minds of such people would forever lie beyond the reach of men like him, who did at least ponder now and then the reasons for things. (p. 115)
All these quotes refer to the same character, MacLaren, whose mental moorings fluctuate. I do not remember encountering the name Naskapi before now. Googling reveals that the Naskapi are an Innu (native) group from eastern Canada (Quebec, Labrador) who eventually allied with the French against the Iroquois Confederacy. Is this a clue that MacLaren has traveled to eastern North America? [I haven’t finished the book yet….]
Trivia: what if the powder (not ricin, but substance hasn’t been named) the University of Texas student found on her roll of quarters (given to her by her mother) when she was preparing to do her laundry is…soap powder! (Thanks, John!)
Underlying theme of this entry: the obscuring of truths.
Pledge: I’ll strive to avoid overemployment of “vain lines” in this blahg.
Friday, 24 February 2006
Photo by Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images
I’m not comparing myself to Harry Connick, really! Love this photo from the Washington Post, where Harry shows off his flexibility during the curtain call on opening night for “The Pajama Game” at the American Airlines Theatre in New York City.
My jump, on the other hand, was for a budding journalist, for her class assignment back in my UGA days. She had to catch some action, as for a sports photo, to train her finger to stop the action instead of missing it.
Of course, John eventually took my photo into Photoshop and moved me an additional foot in the air! Talk about drama!
Thursday, 16 February 2006
“Wealthy women are going to injection parties,” said Dr. Daniel Kane, a plastic surgeon in Miami who treats complications from these procedures. “They tell each other: ‘So-and-so is having a guy over to inject stuff. She looks gorgeous.’ And then they go. They’re proud of it, until they have a problem.”*
If this is your idea of doing something racy that you can be proud of, you’d best stick to collecting wild bird’s eggs or butterflies! Or even ashtrays and bathrobes nabbed from hotels!
* From The New York Times “Beauty on the Black Market” by Natasha Singer, 16 Feb 2006, dateline: Miami. You may have to register—it’s free!
Wednesday, 15 February 2006
I know the buzz these days is loudest about the Cheney hunting accident (pomposity to the nth degree in the handling of that!), but I’m far more interested in this: Sotheby’s reports selling one of Edward Steichen’s nature photographs, “The Pond-Moonlight,” for more than $2.9 million US, a record for a photo, to a gallery on behalf of a private (and presently anonymous) buyer (I get my info from a Washington Post story).
Interestingly, the seller was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you have not yet realized that museums do not obtain and hold objects, but churn them back into the market at a regular rate, you must. This nets the museums cash for items that duplicate materials they already have, or items that they’d rather not hold (e.g., they don’t “fit” with their collection goals). It also enlarges the market so that illicit sellers can more easily insert illegally obtained items into the marketing stream.
I do not understand this kind of acquisition fever, but I’ve sure seen it in action. The Brits are particularly good at it: wild bird egg collecting–meaning nabbing the egg from the nest—was quite the thing in Victorian England (it’s now illegal there).
What do I collect? I guess it’s memories of good times!