dreary -> cheery

I opened the drapes yesterday morning to this pitiful, salty sight and thought how well it characterizes the grim stage we're at, when winter feels like it might never give way to spring. I filled the watering can and brought it back to the window where the geranium, orchid, hibiscus and rosemary are over-wintering, gleaning as much sun as they can ... to bust out these encouraging little buds and flowers! It seems foolhardy to say so but if predictions are accurate it's possible that once the week is through the temperature could stop dipping down below zero for a while. As in, until next fall?

Three Bag by Konstantin Grcic.

what is colour?

what is a flame?
what is time?
what is colour?

The Flame Challenge: scientists explain science to 11 year-olds via the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.
Listen to A. A. talk about how this came to be.

 

 

The sky over the overpass at twilight on Sunday.

Russia seen by Russians

 

Sergej Smirnov.

Conversation with a priest.

 

Igor Lagunov, Magnitigorsk. 

A celebratory dinner for a funeral in Altai, the region bordering Kasakhstan, Mongolia and China. 

Igor Lagunov, Magnitigorsk. 

Valeriy Klamm, Novosibirsk. 
On Trinity Sunday (the feast celebration of God as three persons that occurs the week after Pentecost) in the village of Biysk, grass and branches of birch are brought inside to decorate an orthodox church.

 
Sergey Maximishin. St. Petersburg. 
Marina, an insemination technician, and Lyuba, a milkmaid, pose for a portrait on a dairy farm near St. Petersburg, near the road to Moscow.

Bret and Kermit

We've been watching F ofthe C lately and I remembered that Bret McKenzie composed this and won a prize for it..

Dad 1942

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. 

Walt Whitman
Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855

Mirko Hanák

After hundreds of passes in the last 5 years, it suddenly occurred to me to capture the storage in these windows of the Asian market on St-Denis the other day. Harv and I were out together ... maybe it was his influence.

Bavette.

This handsome print ( - who made it? i don't know - ) makes me think of the superlative focus of Saugatuck Craft Butchery in Connecticut. Ryan Fibiger, owner and head butcher, was recently interviewed by Leaonard Lopate on Food Fridays. Listen here.

 

 Under The Nile.

 

 

Christopher Payne has spent the last 3 years photographing American textile mills.
This follows his 2009 book on asylums, for which Oliver Sacks wrote the introduction, and a series of photographs taken at One Steinway Place that document the manufacturing of pianos.

Harvey and I wrapped up a gift for a friend, a new baby on the block. xxoo

weather

freezing rain gif
from Environment Canada today.

Messengers from the Sea God's Palace

Oarfish.
A creature that measures up to five metres in length and lives at underwater depths of 1000 metres. 

The body of an oarfish was found off the coast of California last month, an event considered the harbinger of a powerful earthquake. More here and something interesting here. 

Sarah at Banquet has featured the oarfish in her Sea Animals of the Atlantic print.

Ray Price : Jan. 12th 1926 - Dec. 16th 2013

One of my music heroes, the inimitable Ray Price. He passed yesterday.

An obituary in the NYTimes.

Peter O'Toole: Aug. 2, 1913 - Dec. 14, 2013

Rest in peace, good man.
An obituary here. 

This little angel was 4 months old yesterday and, before he grows to big to fit it, I took photographs of him wearing the gown that his maternal namesake (Great Grandpa Harvey) was christened in..

we

a photograph of a photograph i made in 1999 (of a sculpture i made in 1998) installed in the living room of a collector.

innovation

Alice Wins !

The Nobel Prize for literature. A short interview.

.

H A R V E Y J O N E S

Our tiny darling was born Friday August 9th, 2013 at 07h05.
Harvey T.T. Jones. He has his Great Grandfather's namesake, Harvey Roland Hanson.

Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go, Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living, But the child who is born on the Sabbath day, Is lucky and happy and good and gay.