One Single Impression: Borders

From Topsail, April 2011

Dunes
Sea oats
And sand fence
Make borders
The sea
Remakes
With every breath
In every moment.
There are no limits,
No closing off,
No here and there,
Then and now,
Earth and water,
Love and loss,
This world and the one we dream.

There are only shifting sands.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: On Fire

From Topsail, April 2011

I thought I was up on time to be on the beach for the sunrise one day last week, but I was actually on time to be on the way to the beach. Every step, every breath, every moment, every single thing about being alive and well and face to face with a beautiful day on the beach is just right, though. Even the wild things growing through the stinking mud at low tide are perfect.

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: Meet the Manager

From Topsail, April 2011

From Topsail, April 2011

This sign is stuck in the mud in the intracoastal waterway behind my parents' home in North Carolina.  Always, always, always, there is a bird perched on the sign. Usually, it is a pelican.  The presence of this cormorant suggested me a shake-up in personnel.  Or an opportunistic cormorant who needed a rest.  With the subcontracting that goes on these days, you just never know.

Wordless Wednesday

Header Challenge: Speed

Rising to the head-banger challenge of speed this week, I have come up with these.  Here is a young man who was cruising along the intracoastal waterway on his surfboard. He went back and forth about a million times before his mother called him home for dinner.

From Topsail, April 2011

Then, along came this little ol' beauty, which also motored along pretty quickly with the help of the wind.  (The kid with the surfboard needs to maybe borrow one of his mom's sheets so he can put on a few more miles next time.)

From Topsail, April 2011

After a few short seconds, the boat was behind the cover of some brush on one of those little islands that punctuate the intracoastal.  The image tells you why Topsail is Topsail.  It's so easy to hide if you're a pirate!

From Topsail, April 2011

Across the street and on the beach, my daughter and her funny little Dachshund sped ahead of me to get some exercise and have some fun.

From Topsail, April 2011

Please speed along to the other headbangers Dave, Lanny, imac, Gailsman, and Tom-fishing guy ato see how they make do… for their headers.

My World Tuesday: Turtles, Turtles, Turtles

From Turtles

From Turtles

From Turtles

From Turtles

From Turtles

From Turtles

The Karen Beasley Sea Turtle Hospital and Rehabilitation Center on Topsail Island in North Carolina is holding a fundraiser involving these and several other hand-painted and decorated fiberglass turtles that have been placed in various businesses, restaurants, and municipal buildings around the island and on the mainland. Every one of them is amazing, to say the very least. While we were down over April vacation, we came across these turtles. Come summer, we will look for the others; come September, we will make a bid on our favorite--which is the one greenish one decorated with the Cape Hatteras lighthouse on his back.)

Remember, sea turtles will soon be laying their eggs on the beach. Please respect this 12-million-year-old ritual and stay off the dunes, keep your dog from digging in the sand, knock down sand castles and fill holes, put your toys and furniture away at night, and turn off bright lights on the beach. Be kind. (If you forget, check the nearest Dumpster; I probably stopped by while you were sleeping.)

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: The Perfume of Spring

From Topsail, April 2011

OK, Southerners, please introduce me to this fragrant beauty! It grows at my parents' home in North Carolina, and its fragrance seems to capture everything clean and beautiful and full of love and hope that makes April the wonderful month it is.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Place

Grooves in the sand
Cross the dunes,
Stretch and fade and fan
Into the waves
That groove the mud
Until the breakers roll
Into  shrugs and turn
To return
And return again.
These patterns that measure time
Draw over and over again
A picture of that first breath
And the second
That shaped heaven and earth.

In every second
Every breath
Every beat
Of your heart (and mine)
The universe draws a picture
And the story is new.

Know your place.
Know your time.
Know the story.

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Newtown, Connecticut

From Miscellaneous

Deep in the woods across from my parents' home sits this beautiful field surrounded by fences and suggesting a time of agriculture and barely getting by on the land and I don't know. The sky was so busy, beautiful, and soft that it took my breath away. The ugly perk tests jutting out of the ground were a reminder that the quiet countryside will not always be the quiet countryside. Nothing gold can stay.  Thank goodness that what is beautiful now is beautiful now.

Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday: The Dude Walks On

"Must you take my picture when my feathers look like this?"

Wordless Wednesday

Book Review: I Never Saw Another Butterfly

I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Hana Volavkova

Recently reading about the Houston Holocaust Museum's planned 2013 exhibition titled The Butterfly Project, I read for the first time Pavel Friedmann's poem "The Butterfly" in which he remarks that he has seen no butterfly in the ghetto though some of the beauty of the natural world insists on itself even there.

The ghetto is the Terezin Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia. Terezin was a bizarre experiment of the Third Reich, which set it up as a place to hold Jewish artists, intellectuals, and Jewish German army veterans of World War I. To these Jews and to the world it presented this depraved and dirty ghetto as a gift to these Jews who had greatly to German culture. In face, the Germans even succeeded in fooling the Red Cross into believing the place was OK.

Meanwhile, 15,000 childre passed through Terezin, but fewer than 100 survived.

While they were in that hellish bastion of cruelty, these children were nevertheless blessed by the Vienna-born, Bauhaus-trained artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. Under her gentle direction and with the few art supplies shemanaged to hoard, many ofhtese childdren found a release for all that they were feeling as they encountered Nazi cruelty and awaited death every day.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly exhibits these children's artwork, poems, and prose in the space of 106 pages. The book includes a catalog of the works that identifies the young artists' birth, deportation, and death dates.

When the book arrived the other day, I decided I would not read the book until I coul read it in one sitting. The book deserves complete, uninterrupted attention. The innocence and honesty, truth and reality captured by these children create beauty where otherwise beauty could not take hold.


Works of art on scraps of paper are the legacy of murdered children to the present. May we learn from them.



Hey, try to open up your heart
To beauty; go to the woods someday
And weave a wreath of memory there.
Then if tears obscure your way
You'll know how wonderful it is
To be alive.

--Anonymous, 1941
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My World Tuesday: A Capitol Place

From Mar 26, 2011

From Mar 26, 2011

The Hartford Times building, above, is being renovated for future use as an annex to the Wadsworth Atheneum.  At the moment, it's a striking ruin decorated with allegorical scenes that suggest some lofty purpose the media. 

From Mar 26, 2011

The children's playscape in Bushnell Park is as lovely as it is whimsical.  Of course, the turtles in the little water park area caught my fancy.  This is one of the few that time and the elements have not yet decapitated.  The oversized reading material behind him form the benches of the square picnic tables that dot the playscape.

From Mar 26, 2011

What's a big city without an oversized elk wearing that deer-in-the-headlights look as it surveys the urban landscape?  I'll never know, because here's the big dude in all his glory.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Sea Oats

Topsail. A sunrise through the long legs of some sea oats.  Not a flower but a plant, and not even the whole plant.  Just the stems. These oats grow on along the length of the dunes at Topsail. When I am up in time for the sunrise, my first view at the beach is through the oats.  I just love it.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Shackles

From Miscellaneous

Shackles:

What holds me down

What I hold onto:

Surrender

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: Good Bye

From Miscellaneous

Last week the 47-year-old daughter of my parents' very close friends died after a long and arduous struggle with cancer. I knew her when we were much younger and would be stuck together to play in the way that the children of parents who are friends learn to make do with each other. She was a lively and downright wonderful person. It's a tough thing. Reminds me to be grateful for here and the friends and family I have around me. After she passed, I told my daughter the news and asked her to make a picture for her parents.

My daughter's very lovely and gentle art teacher talks about art as thinking and expressing yourself in color. Here I see grief and hope and feel the pulse of a tender heart. Life was good. Life is good.  Life will be good.

Skywatch Friday

Header Challenge: Fire

This week's header challenge is my suggestion, fire. It sure seems like all kinds of fires are erupting around the world--naturally, politically, disastrously. All kinds of heat. Stepping back from how big this topic is, I thought of that big old fire that has us running around in circles through the galaxy and racing through the vast darkness of the universe. Sometimes warm is good. Sometimes it's scary. But here we are.

Please stop by the other headbangers Lanny, imac, Gailsman, Tom-fishing guy and Sandy,  to see how they make do… for their headers.

Wordless Wednesday: Old Dogs

From Miscellaneous

Wordless Wednesday

Book Review: Carolina's Story

Carolina's Story: Sea Turtles Get Sick Too! by Donna Rathmell

Carolina's Story, Sea Turtles Get Sick Too! by Donna Rathmell is a photographic essay the narrative of which describes the rescue of a turtle suffering from the flu from her first moments with a rescue team to the turtle hospital, to her return to the ocean. Carolina, who is a loggerhead, made a full recovery thanks to the Sea Turtle Hospital and the folks at the South Carolina Aquarium.

During her time at the hospital, Carolina came to recognize the people and the routines of the hospital, bonding with the people around her and with the other turtles. The book shows that turtles are sentient beings; love is not the private proprety of human experience but something that shapes all life.

View all my reviews

My World Tuesday: Hunting Tupperware in the Woods

From Miscellaneous

These past few weekends, we've been geocaching in the Mulholland Preserve, acres and acres of open space lined with stone walls, filled with second-growth trees, and marked with streams and rock outcroppings.  We were hunting for Tupperware.  Filled with little toys.  We were geocaching.

From Miscellaneous

I had the habit of lagging behind, reading figures in the rocks as if they were clouds. Here I saw the grim reaper slouching away from our direction.

From Miscellaneous

Finding cache 5 on this preserve in Newtown, Connecticut, took three attempts and a request for another clue from the geocacher who hid it.  He obliged. The third attempt yielded this treasure trove:

From Miscellaneous

Geocaching: Usinga $6 billion satellite to hunt for Happy Meal prizes and then leave them there for the next crew. And to say you were there. It's fun.

From Miscellaneous

Craig Lundwall: I Miss You

From Flowers

The daffodils are coming up at my parents' after a long, steep, cold winter. Years ago I planted many of the bulbs that are thriving today. (I remember dad asking me if I'd come over after work and help him plant 500 bulbs. "Sure," I said. It sounded like nothing, but then sticking those bulbs in the rocky, unyielding ground made the task a challenge and a half. I planted many but far and away not all of those bulbs.)  I love seeing them blossom ever spring. They are my favorite flower. 

Noticing them today and thinking of you, I recalled that spring was not your favorite season, that winter was with its bright sunshine and crisp blues and whites. Spring seems such a dull evaporating of winter into something else. A time between times. I think of you on the anniversary of your passing, Craig. I think of what you loved. It is no wonder. You, too, were a bright light. A strong personality. A presence. Every year at this time I think the winter you loved feeds the daffodils I love, makes change possible.

Damn it all, though, I miss you.

Today's Flowers: Hydrangea That Was

From Flowers

and will be
Today's Flowers

From Flowers

Wandering around outside yesterday, I found myself facing some winter damage to trees and shrubs around the wee humble abode.  It was good to see these stalwarts of the summer garden are back for another round.  In fact, it's amazing to me how much outdoors is business as usual this spring despite the hefty, heavy winter.  Aside from the odd dramatic breakage, just about everything bounced back.  There's a lesson in this.

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Reciprocal

Open arms,

Wide universe

Love, and love again

One Single Impression

Skywatch Friday: A Fine Line

Early rain in the distance. You watch it. You know it's coming. You head straight for it. There is no struggle, and it feels very, very good. Morning comes.

Skywatch Friday

Header Challenge: Flight

This week's header challenge, flight, brings to mind all those wonderful creatures I often find myself waiting to take off.  All that breath-holding that goes on when I am out for a walk and come upon some beautiful bird that I hope has not noticed me and will linger long enough for me to admire a bit.  This blue heron at Airlie Gardens in Wilmington, North Carolina, seemed unbothered by me and Adella last summer. We got off two whole shots before he blew!

Please stop by the other headbangers Lanny, imac, Gailsman, Tom-fishing guy and Sandy,  to see how they make do… for their headers.

Wordless Wednesday: Feeling Beat Up

From Miscellaneous

Wordless Wednesday

Keep Those Babies Warm

My World Tuesday: Hartford Public Library

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We stopped at the Hartford Public Library after our visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum last Saturday. I like the building and the atmosphere it engenders. There are people everywhere doing or not doing things as they please. Many people sleep in the boxy club chairs, but nobody minds. There are others who seem to be there to simply be somewhere. There are dozens of folks poring over computer monitors. There are security guards making small talk with librarians. There are art shows waiting for visitors.

From Mar 26, 2011

The art shows are what brought us up to the third floor, where we saw this sequence of panels. If they had been orange, I would have guessed Cristo had been there. We stood and stared and wondered, "Is this the art?" A couple came up behind us and wondered that out loud. (This is my commentary on contemporary art. I have said it without saying it in the way some art is art without being it.)

Out the window, though, was art in the form of a cityscape the focal point of which is the dome of Hartford's exquisite capitol building.

From Mar 26, 2011

The view directly below captured ol' Sam Clemens taking in the view from ground level.

From Mar 26, 2011

At ground level, he cut an even more commanding image.

From Mar 26, 2011

From Mar 26, 2011

In preparing this post, I spent some time trying to find the architect of this building and the sculptor of this fine piece but without any results. I will keep looking. If you know, please let me know. At the moment, I feel like I did with my daugher at the Monet show. "Forget about the captions," I told her. "Just enjoy."  With that, I'll shut up.  Have a great week.

My World Tuesday

Today's Flowers: Spring Has Croaked

From 179CANON

Brothers and sisters of the blogosphere, let's hear a hearty, "Amen!" The crocuses have finally pressed their way through the mud to bring a little color to spring here in sunny Connecticut. We came across clumps of these little guys in my parents' yard on Saturday, when we stopped in to do a little springtime cleanup and maybe work some winter-softened muscles. Our bedtime arrived early Saturday night. Maybe the muscles will forgive?

Today's Flowers

One Single Impression: Epidemic

Everywhere, birds sing
As crocuses warm and break the earth.
Tomorrow: daffodils
And the laughter of children
Rising like bears
Craving the sweetness of summer flowers
In honey, in sunshine, in memory.
Springtime:
Everyone, everything, everywhere: hungry.

One Single Impression

Earth Hour Photos

A global celebration of Earth Hour 2011 from Nicky Loh on Vimeo.