Just Little

My imagination has always been easily captured and held by scale. Today, for the first time (clang clang) I realised this tendency is magnified (pardon the expression) when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

So here my thoughts return to a particularly difficult day a few summers ago when I walked through Den Hague to spend some hours in Madurodam, the tiniest city in the world, where blackbirds loom over churchyards and begonias take over buildings.

And I'm thinking about Robert Moses's Panorama and a new way of mapping misery, with pink plastic triangles made by Damon Rich. I'd like to hear this conversation he and Martha Rosler had a few years ago.

Living Rooms

in the early morning.

It's renovation season in the city and the jackhammers and backhoe in the neighbor's yard started at 7am. As my Grandma Hanson would say, "for the love of Pete!" though i don't much mind when it's light like it is.

Anticipating this (or half of it - the half that's Meryl) and this.

Ball Diamond

Made and mended by hand.
The photo below just caught my eye relative to seeing this cage on our walk this morning. It's from a collection of memorabilia from Duryea Pennsylvania.


These bring this to mind.

And in a roundabout way, this.

Happy 4th of July !

Sprouting

on the window sill: alfalfa, adzuki, dupui lentil and sunflower. It may be a deterrent to those of us who are extremely busy but if you're interested in a reciprocal relationship with living things, know that these little ones require a fair amount of daily loving attention for which they will reward you handsomely.
This will prove helpful in getting going and keeping going.

reorganising

the studio now that I'm home again. Packing away, shifting around and removing stuff to make a more spacious place.

The weather's been so perfect, bright and hot and rainy and cool in turn. All the houseplants are outside for their summer holidays. The radishes, new onions and strawberries are gangbusting the market. We can ride bikes downtown sleeveless for late-night movies!

I finally got a copy of the Nuala O'Faolian interview that E. Wachtel did in 2008,
And there is this timely thing, and this.

Tenderness & Responsibility

Some reading tonight on attachment theory and I came across this image from Nat'l Geographic (vol. 31, 1917, pg 564) which is paired with this caption:

AN ESKIMO FAMILY.
Tenderness and responsibility in their treatment of children is a virtue of the Eskimo which binds them closer to the brotherhood of civilized peoples than their skill at carving or with the needle.

1st kales, spinachi, nasturtium, rapini, beet greens

make a good salad for us for supper. Celebrating no more buying greens for a few months.
s u m m e r !

1st Radish

The weekend was really sunny and beautiful. We worked in the garden and enjoyed salads with the first tender rapini and spinach leaves and one bright radish.

lupins and a rainy day inside

bbqs

Linens

and a cotton jumper & wool sweater bought from the ladies at the little antique shop on Main Street (Sackville, NB).

What a dreamy, temperate summer day.

Green Eggs

The glorious fruit of the noble hen.
Would you like them here or there?

Planting

at Marshwinds farm, NB also known as a lickle bitty heaven.
Sorry about the sound... it wasn't actually that windy a day.
.
.
.
also
take a look at this

Saturday

My little midget pal and a pretty pinwheeled rose in a bouquet.

We're off for a walk on the mountain today, a picnic, and later tonight a backyard bbq.

the wknd is nice to us.

The Stacks

Appliqué

on the banners

Pia

The exceptional Pia Bramley

Hat Map Pins

for a landscape that fits snugly into a table vitrine in the foyer of the Library.

Banners for a Space

Of white linen ...for a show opening next week at the oldest lending library in Canada, the Atwater Library and Mechanics Institute. One of 19 works being exhibited as part of the Montréal Off-Biennale hosted by Dare-Dare Centre de diffusion d'art multidisciplinaire du Montréal.

K. sent me this ... Happy May long-wknd planting!

Still Mending

Mending Lace

Tete de violon Soup

With leek and spinach potato gnocchi.
You know it's spring when the magic fiddleheads arrive at the market.

Sauté 4 leeks (mainly just the white parts), a diced potato and a rib of sliced celery in a soup pot with a little butter and a good tsp of salt until slightly soft,
Add 1/2 cup or so of dry white wine. Cook, letting the wine almost disappear, about 10 minutes. Add a quart of water or stock and bring to the boil, then lower to a simmer for about 15 minutes to allow the potato to become tender.
Bring another small pot of water to the boil with a little salt and a olive oil and add a few handfuls of gnocchi, allowing them to cook 'til they rise to the top. Place them in a bowl and keep warm.
Add a cup or 2 of fresh fiddle heads to the soup and cook another minute or so, making sure the fiddle heads only cook to a bright tenderness. Adjust the salt if need be & add a few grinds of black pepper.
Sauté a scallion in butter 'til barely tender.
Place a spoonful of gnocchi in each soup bowl, ladle the soup over and add a few scallions to the top.

+ +

Some 14th century German headdresses, and above, Durer's Four Witches engraving from 1497

+

A feather headdress from one of the Cowichan First Nations

A glass negative portrait dated 1894 of a man from the Mandan First Nation wearing a two-feather headdress and holding a feather fan.
The Mandan are a Great Plains tribe whose traditional territory includes the banks of the Missouri River and two of its tributaries: the Knife River and the Heart River. The Mandan suffered greatly from Small Pox and Whooping Cough epidemics which reduced their numbers to 125 by the turn of the 19th century, resulting in their banding with two neighboring tribes: the Arikara and Hidatsa.

Photo by Charles Milton Bell. Collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology, now in the U.S. National Anthropological Archives.


Another glass negative, taken in 1893 on the Eastern Plains and depicting members of the Arapaho (Cow) Nation in a Crow Ceremony.

Photo by James Moody. Collected by the Bureau of American Ethnology, now in the U.S. National Anthropological Archives.

Head Dressing

Ova Herero women, c. 1940, on the border between Bechuanaland and South West Africa (photo from the Royal Geographical Society).

From the Lewis Walpole Library Collection of prints on hair & wigs and the hairdressers & barbers who created and tended them:
Miss Prattle, consulting Dr. Double Fee about her Pantheon Head Dress
London: Printed for Carington Bowles, February 8, 1772, hand-colored mezzotint


15th century women, France

North American First Nations, California
Two Ugandan men, 1902

Baroque headdresses worn by Paul Richter and Margarete Schon in Fritz Lang's 5-hour silent film saga Siegfried's Tod, made in 1924 and based on an early 13th c Norse epic poem.


The Headdress Ball
a charity event held by Las Floristas every May at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California
1. Lillian Molieri as The Princess of Scheherazade, May 2nd 1952
2. Mrs. Theodore Bentley wearing Freeway - U.S.A., May 5, 1962
3. The Grand March - A Salute to the Seven Lively Arts, May 1, 1965
(images from the L.A. public Library archives)

Memory Palaces

Cathedral domes.

Turin
Moscow
Vienna
Siguenza
Seville
Paris

APRIL EIGHTEENTH 2008

Thinking of you, Little M - running free at Fox Farm.

a year can be a day

Every Morning

Yoga and a meditation, and this one plays on the mat and on me and under me and then she conks out on my lap.

Cabbage

for Easter.

Brown and wild rice, sautéed Spanish and red onion, garlic, red pepper, grated carrot, thyme, Hungarian paprika, S&P ...combined and wrapped in steamed cabbages leaves. Top with a simple garlic tomato sauce and bake, covered, in a 350 degree oven for 40 minutes.

Martin Margiela

a beautiful comfortable ensemble from his new collection.

LA PLANETE AUX ENFANTS PERDUS

par Christian Pineau
Illustrations de Marianne Clouzot
Librarie Hachette, 1960

(thrifted today at the église at St-Zotique and de la Roche)

happy birthday

to
Janice
Chera
&
Kendra

love
Tom

Baby

An April Birthday Present

A breakfast of brown rice everything (milk incl)

* * * * * * * * * * * *

and a package in the mail from my sister and her boys.
Thank you, A, C, D & F.

What treats!