Discovery Drafts

 When Adella and I rolled into New Haven on Sunday so she could do her photography homework, we were blessed with a special treat:  a group of people were commemorating the anniversary of the 1916 Irish Uprising with an even on the Green.  The actual event took place on April 24 just 98 short years ago.  It was a school-teacher-led Rebellion that reminded everybody yet again that nobody in power grants you your rights; you claim them at a very high price.  We heard speeches and music, and it was very lovely.  As we wandered around the buildings at the bottom of the Green, we could hear a tin whistle over the roar of motorcycles and cranky cars.  It was sweet.  It's great that everybody gets a chance to do their thing on the Green. City Hal is very beautiful.  We're happy to report that the clock in the tower works just fine.   We got there at 10. There are three Christian churches at the center of the green, and they had their doors open at 10 a.m. I'm not a beli

Adella and I came upon these cherry blossoms in New Haven on Sunday, when we traveled down for her to get some photos of urban architecture for digital photography class assignment.  These flowers were perfuming the air in a garden off of Grand Street that I had never before seen despite my years of travel in and out of this city.  It was a great find. Here's my rose bud among the cherry trees. I love New Haven for all the wonderful things it offers--open-air art, parks, museums, music, architecture, history--and the people it embraces.  The people of the city struggle with poverty, crime, apathy, and the like, but the people are real.  My students remarked the other day that they don't hear much gossip or see the damage that cliques can cause or suffer from limited opportunities to do stuff.  On some level, kids understand just how much is offered them, how the world places itself at their feet, and many grab hold with two hands and make it work.  In the city, school

Each day is a new wonder, inevitably.  On this day, my daughter woke me up to make sure I joined her, her friend, and the pups for the sunrise.  We jumped into our clothes and onto our bicycles with the dogs in the baskets so that we could get there on time.  We made it, and we found ourselves among many others doing the same thing.  Among those others were a few dozen young Marines running like a silent wind to the pier and back.  Even Maeve stepped aside to let them go silently by.  What day isn't a beauty-filled miracle? Skywatch Friday

Wordless Wednesday

My daughter's friend had never been to Gettysburg (and didn't know what it was), so there we went on the way home last week.  It is a powerful place, vibrating with the spirit of the men who fought there 151 years ago.   We watched the 20-minute History Channel video "New Birth of Freedom" narrated by Morgan Freeman before we visited the cyclorama painted by Frenchman Paul Philippoteaux in the 1880s.  Both the video and the narration that accompanies the viewing of the painting in the round make the point that the Civil War was ultimately a war about the value of the individual and that "a great thing had been done" for us in the defense and preservation of the Union. President Lincoln himself did many great things during the Civil War, including essentially rewriting the Constitution to include all men.  The Reconstruction Amendments and others that followed ultimately extended and amplified the Constitution to make it applicable to all Ameri

These yellow beauties are called some kind of rose that isn't a rose.  They were gracing the day at the Bellamy Mansion in Wilmingtno, North Carolina, last week. Today's Flowers

Early this morning, I could see pelicans in the distance merging from severeal points to form a line.  For once, I didn't fumble for my camera; I waited.  These are some elegant birds who sure do know how to play together. Our World Tuesday

Wordless Wednesday

Everything we do in life is about the outfit.  That's from the point of view of an adolescent girl, anyway!  Adella jointed the track team, and that has meant shopping for track gear.  Which meant going to the mall with Adella and her friends, who also run track.  Style decisions are not to be made in isolation.  The displays weren't meant to be interactive, but that didn't stop the girls.  Above, they are imitating the Nodstrom dummies just because they could.  The hospital's water all display was too cool to not touch.  So they did.  At Aeropostale (our favorite store we can't afford), we checked out the art instalation that was in the works the last time we were there.  It's done now, and it's a pretty cool variation on Post-it art.  Back at Nordstrom's, there were the displays with the political titles.  Art instalations of another sort. Brooks Brothers included a wooden suit-makers dummy in its display.  Kind of a weird looking he

Today's Flowers

I love skies like this.  I love blue skies, too.  But I think this is the only kind of drama I appreciate these days.  I guess I'm pretty lucky, because we get a lot of this kind of sky drama all over the place these days. Skywatch Friday