coasting

school starts soon, we are coasting

detail

click

[The brushwork seems other-worldly;

incomparable, assured, brilliant.]

Sargent

cutting room floor

Just a few things that made me look

twice in the past few months. Trying

to clean up my files. A few photos

are mine. The rest, links to inspire.

weekend met minute

Michele Lemieux

Stormy Night

rounding the corner

This was taken last year as we drove out

of town after a particularly glorious day

in Haleiwa. I miss our old home and

the people who were there with us.

(School years roll in and out, and

suddenly

you are packing someone's

belongings in a couple of boxes

and sending them off.

It's a joy to watch people you love

grow up, stunning that

it

happens so quickly.

Cheers to a new school year,

to the people we love who are

opening their books

for another great adventure.)

For the enormous love and generosity

of spirit that accompanies us, always: Aloha nui loa.

stream

Art Inconnu

Mai Trung Tru

always in style

not quite a story about a chair

sometimes a chair is just a chair

and there's not much more you can

say about it except that the r

seemed to take flight at the end

on the compensation of autumn

Given the fact that I've never actually lived in the city, I cannot figure out what makes me miss New York so much. Perhaps it is something I caught on the Hudson, a cool breeze that crept in through a window slightly ajar one happy winter in West Point. Perhaps it's more deeply rooted, genetic strands woven into a sharp young man who saved, near the turn of another century, his school lunch money for a far more delicious meal from the hot dog vendor (and kept a few important pennies in the doing). Anyhow. The longing is there.

Looking at these pictures, I realize it can be oddly gray. But that just makes the missing it, somehow, more intense. The city is beautiful even in grayness.

Winter there may not be easy.

But doesn't Autumn compensate?

august thoughts on positive good

"It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free government, which we have enjoyed all our lives."

Abraham Lincoln

August.22.1864 - Speech to the One Hundred Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment

fresh

You'll see with the postings, lately, that I have been employing my sketchpad a bit more and that I am still trying to get the hang of my scanner (she and I don't always, yet, see eye to eye).

Anyway.

We have fresh tomatoes this summer, and it seems a great luxury. There are not a lot yet. There may not actually be a lot ever (this summer), as I am just sort of learning how to do this tomato-growing thing. Next year (I believe with all my heart that I will actually do this, yes) the beds will be labored over a bit (a lot) more before the tender shoots are placed amongst the clods.

The best thing about the whole business is that the plants smell heavenly. I remember, as a child, not liking the smell. At all. It seemed, perhaps, rather aggressively vegetable-y. But now it is a sweet perfume, and heady, and doubly grand when, behind the fragrant leaves, there is red or green or yellow (I did go for color) peeking through and encouraging the vision of a brilliant (healthy!) salad in the next few days.

The Sailor cannot see the North, but knows the Needle can.

"I smile when you suggest that I delay 'to publish' - that being foreign to my thought, as Firmament to fin.

If fame belonged to me, I could not excape her - if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase - and the approbation of my Dog, would forsake me - then. My Barefoot Rank is better.

You think my gait 'spasmodic.' I am in danger, Sir.

You think me 'uncontrolled.' I have no Tribunal. . . .

The Sailor cannot see the North, but knows the Needle can."

Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson

June 7, 1862

and, now, for a moment at the Tate

Ernst Barlach

Der Rächer

and so we Met again

(everything but lamb: iPhone)

Snag?

"You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination. But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely from this period of ten months this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense."

Winston Churchill

October 29, 1941

Harrow School

[Absolutely a good read, here. Just in case you ever hit a snag.]

Uptown Trains

Nothing Beats Fresh

sweet and straight

from the stalk

with perhaps

a caterpillar or two

for company

at the met (again)