Category Archives: Life

Jan29

maestro.

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 a beautiful, beautiful film

in every way

it will bring you

great music

great joy

great love

great passion

and

will break your heart.

early in the film

felicia, later to be leonard bernstein’s wife

asks him –

“you don’t even know how much you need me, do you?”

and he answers –

“i might.”

through all they endured

together and apart

around the globe and back

they found

the greatest love of their lives

in each other.

brava.

—

“a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them;

and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

-leonard bernstein

—
image/film credits:  netflix, lea pictures, sikelis productions, amblin entertainment, fred berner films
Jan27

white on white.

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the kinder painted

using play feathers and real fingers

and colors they mixed and made

 one

chose to paint

only white on white paper

 to see what it would look like

 it was a beautiful painting

all nuance and shade and texture.

“renoir said once that nothing was so difficult, and at the same time so exciting, to paint, as white on white.”
– ambroise vollard

Jan24

reports.

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*frank the 6-month-old puppy with his report card that hailed him as the “life of the party.”

—
spending the recent past writing report cards
for the kinder
 always a fascinating trip down memory lane
seeing how far they’ve come already
an unlimited distance still to go
the good, the bad, and the unexplained
all the good hearts, dramas, tears, and laughs
each their very own person
learning as we go.
all of us.

—

*more of frank the puppy’s report card:

“We sent him there because he is truly the most energetic puppy I have ever met,” his mom told Newsweek. “Our older dog needed a break,” she joked.

When Frank came home with the report card, she was in stitches. “I thought it was hysterical when I saw it because I can only imagine that Frank is probably the class clown that’ll do anything for a laugh and that’s definitely his idea of the best time,” she said.

Described on the card as the “life of the party,” the report also says that Frank loved wrestling with his buddies.

“It makes my heart so happy to know that he has so many pals at preschool,” said Spahr. Working on etiquette skills in his preschool class, the report also told Frank’s owners that his best friends are Daisy, Cooper, Vader, Hudson, and even a dog named Angus Beef.

—

“my report card always said, ‘jim finishes first and then disrupts the other students.”

-jim carrey

 

—

credits: newsweek magazine uk, alice gibbs

Jan21

riotous.

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warmth and soul-seeking

winter below the surface

life continues on.

—

“and don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. it’s quiet down there but the roots are riotous.”

-rumi

 

 

—

photo credit: science hub  (nodules on the roots of the white clover)

Jan20

snow very happy.

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“well, I know now.  know a little more how much a simple thing like a snowfall can mean to a person”
― sylvia plath

 

 

Jan19

for peanut.

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peanut on the farm – rip, old girl and world champion

Peanut, the world’s oldest chicken, dead at twenty-one: The Chelsea, Michigan  clucker, certified as the oldest living chicken by Guinness last January at age twenty, died of natural causes on Christmas morning, according to its owner, Marsi Parker Darwin of the no-kill farm Darwin’s Eden. In an article last year, Darwin credited her neighbor, Todd Gillihan, with bringing global attention to the hen she rescued from a cold, abandoned egg. He “pestered me,” she said, to go for the world record, resulting in coverage in publications as far flung and prestigious as the Smithsonian Magazine’s website, Washington Post, and the Times of London. A retired librarian, Darwin authored a picture book, “My Girl Peanut & Me,” which is available for on the Darwin’s Eden site.

—

“if i hadn’t started painting, i would have raised chickens.”

-grandma moses

 

 

—

source credits: ann arbor news, smithsonian.com, ann arbor observer

Jan15

humanity.

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our class of 3’s-4’s

met with their learning partners

a 4th grade class

and together

they read a book

learned about what Dr. King

stood for and fought for

in his own peaceful way

talked about

what love, fairness, equality

meant to them

then created

a lovely art piece together

each to become a square

in a large paper quilt

created by the whole school

a beautiful collaboration.

 

—

“make a career of humanity.

commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights.

you will make a better person of yourself,

a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  – March for Integrated Schools, April 18, 1959.

Jan12

michigan medicine.

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as michiganders

we grew up with detroit’s famous vernors ginger ale

not only was is good to drink and make floats and shakes out of it

but we used it as at least 80% of our medicine

if you felt

nauseous, had a virus, flu, unexplained itching, headache, were sore, tired, dizzy

or suffered from an unlimited litany of ailments

you were put to bed

and given cold vernors to sip on

but when the hot vernors showed up

on your bedroom tray

you knew your prognosis was much worse

and your days possibly numbered.

—

“there is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great,

and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.”

-orison swett marden

 

Jan11

collage.

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my class, getting into the collage style of art

—

not me, but very similar to how my house l0oks

when i’m happily immersed in my favorite way to create art,

collage.

—

“collage is more than just an art style.

collage is all about bringing different elements together.

once you form a sensibility about connection,

how different elements relate to each other,

you deepen your understanding of yourself and others.”

-bryan collier, american writer and illustrator

Jan8

real courage.

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seven year-old ernest hemingway, fishing at horton’s creek in michigan, 1906

—

“the thing is to become a master

and in your old age

to acquire the courage to do

what children did when they knew nothing.”

-ernest hemingway