A few things

1. Today I found out a friend is divorcing, divorced, and it made me cry for his sake, for her sake, and for their children.



2. These images are from around the web. Abstract expressionist painter Elaine de Kooning made a series of Bacchus paintings in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When I say "series" I mean more than 100 paintings. I am finding them very inspiring lately, especially the one in the top left corner. Elaine's inspiration for the paintings was Jules Dalou's sculpture "The Triumph of Silenus" created in 1885 and located in Paris. I don't care much for the statue with its leering nudist Santa.

3. Home ownership is throwing up some speed bumps for us lately: ants, plumbing, lawn mower, air conditioning. I am hauling 5 gallon buckets from the back yard to the front to keep the new shrubs watered in.

4. The 17 year cicadas should not be here since we saw them last in 2004. But here they are. Sukey was happily gobbling them up this morning, tail wagging and nose to the ground. Nature's buffet. One made me drop my camera in the driveway this morning.

5. Mo's still napping, so I'm going to go paint now.

Take the night off

My house is zipped up tight right now while the weather is nice enough to throw open every window. I grimace when another mom suggests a trip to the playground. My allergies are not as bad as they used to be but still. I want to be outside spreading mulch and trimming the shrubs and painting. So I do those things, and then sneeze and scratch out the ransom afterward. Spring would be my favorite season were it not for all the pollen. Instead I have a love-hate thing going with the air. This time of year I am missing part of our old neighborhood: the low place in the road on the walk to meadow. The creek crosses under and the spring peepers congregate at all hours to announce their urges to the universe. Nature's string section tuning up for another year.
 
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"The Frogs After Dark" by Robert Bly

I am so much in love with mournful music
That I don't bother to look for violinists.
The aging peepers satisfy me for hours.

The ant moves on his tiny Sephardic feet.
The flute is always glad to repeat the same note.
The ocean rejoices in its dusky mansion.

Bears are often piled up close to each other.
In caves of bears, it's just one hump
After another, and there is no one to sort it out.

You and I have spent so many hours working.
We have paid dearly for the life we have.
It's all right if we do nothing tonight.

We've heard the fiddlers tuning their old fiddles,
And the singer urging the low notes to come.
We've heard her trying to keep the dawn from breaking.

There is some slowness in life that is right for us.
But we love to remember the way the soul leaps
Over and over into the lonely heavens.

Grapefruit two ways, a difficult age, and consignment shopping

At Meeting there are meditations posted on the wall for each month. I read through the queries for Fourth Month and got snagged on this one:

Are you open to receiving guidance and support? And do you give thanks for them?

There is nothing like being a parent to make you realize how much guidance and support you could really use. All day every day. And yet I am terrible at asking for and accepting help. I have no experience with this. If I ask it is with an apology at the ready. I need practice. I have the gratitude part, but as far ask opening myself to receive guidance and support I am like the priest and the grapefruit.

There was a young man studying to become a priest. Grapefruits were available in the cafeteria each morning. He did not grow up eating citrus fruit and discovered that he enjoyed having grapefruit for breakfast. But the act of cutting the fruit in half caused the him much anxiety. He discovered that there were two kinds of grapefruit. Sometimes when he sliced open a grapefruit the sections appeared as a sunburst of little triangles. That kind of grapefruit was easy to scoop out with a spoon and eat. Other days the sections were arrayed sideways. This other kind of grapefruit was time-consuming to eat and made the priest struggle through the membranes over and over to get to the fruit. He studied and compared whole grapefruits trying to tell one type of grapefruit from the other, but all the fruit looked the same. He continued to be confounded by his breakfast. One day the seminarian told a friend about his difficulties. The other man explained to him the anatomy of a grapefruit and how to cut them in half along the equator. The young man was ecstatic! This simple information was a revelation to him. It changed the quality of his life.

I am still comparing grapefruits. Do you ever feel like this? That one brief turn of the wrist is all that separates you from enlightenment? If only I was receptive to a little guidance.

I want to take Mo on the Metro one weekday in May to see Juan's art show in Washington, DC. I really want to see this show. As I plan the day trip out in my head, I consider how in the suburbs it's not a big deal if there are no changing facilities available. We can always retreat to the privacy of our car to take care of business if necessary. How does this work in an urban environment when I am only armed with a stroller and picnic blanket? Do people change their kids in the middle of a park? Are changing facilities more readily available in public rest rooms? And where will we eat? And when will she nap? And I'm thinking about how wiggly and difficult Mo is right now and wondering if taking her to the city by myself is a good idea and generally trying to talk myself out of the whole excursion before it begins. Conveniently a few lines from the movie Angus popped into my head. I don't know the exact quote, but Angus and Grandpa are having a conversation. Angus laments that he is at a difficult age (14), and Grandpa says, "Me too." I am so wrapped up in thinking about what a difficult age Mo is to do this little field trip that I am making the trip more complicated than it needs to be, and I realize that I am at a difficult age also. Upon reflection, who isn't?

And one final thought... I was at the children's consignment sale at the fairgrounds a couple weeks ago. As I waited in the long line to check out, I was right in front of an Amish woman and her two sons. The line deliberately snakes around through the toys and baby supplies, so you can shop those items while you wait. The little Amish boys wanted to touch every plastic, blinking, flashing, musical monstrosity that they saw. At first their mother scolded them and tried to shepherd them back into the line, but after a while it was a lost cause. She kind of shook her head and said they were old enough to behave themselves. The sale would be sensory overload for any child, but you could actually see the Amish boys' minds blowing. I thought how difficult it must be for that Amish mother to keep the consumerism of the world out of their home. And then I thought about how hard it is for me to keep even a fraction of the consumerism of the world (branded clothing, computer games, gadgets, princesses, etc.) out of my home. Some days we are not so different. Acquisitiveness threatens to swallow us all.

Busy bees

Three of my artist friends have exciting things happening in May. And if you are in the vicinity, you should totally go and see and participate and please tell them, "Barb says hi!"


Juan Hernandez has an opening reception on Friday, May 3rd, from 6:30pm - 9pm, at the Arts Club of Washington located at 2017 I St. NW, Washington, DC. The video above is from his show at the Goethe Institute last year, which was reviewed in The Washington Post. (That makes him a rock star in my book.) I became friends with Juan when we both worked as guards at The Phillips Collection.

Marie Riccio has an opening reception on Saturday, May 4th, from 5pm - 9pm at The Artists' Gallery located at 4 East Church St., Frederick, MD. And if you miss the opening, she'll be hosting an encore reception on Saturday, May 18th from 3pm - 5pm. Marie is showing a collection of stunning still life paintings. She is a new friend I met at Paint Snow Hill this year.

And Leslie Belloso will be demonstrating painting at the Salisbury Zoo on Saturday, May 11th from 9am - 10:30am. Her demo is part of the Go Wild With Art event which is open to children and adults. Activities include: Plein Air Painting, Animal Shape Drawing, Aboriginal Drawing, Animal Origami, Sponge and Chalk Drawing, Photowalk, Animals in Clay, Animal Mask Making, open sketch and Demonstrations! It sounds like a lot of fun, especially Leslie's demo. Leslie is an old friend from Paint Snow Hill--and our husbands went to high school together.

Paint Snow Hill 2013

I got home from Paint Snow Hill on Sunday evening. It was a blast, as usual. There were 70 artists painting, and all total 49 paintings were sold at the show. Five of those were mine. And I made another trade with Jess Cross Davis at the end. Here is my Paint Snow Hill 2013 photo album complete with notes and stories if you would like to take a look. Now I'm back to the mommyhood. I can hear the distant fussing. Fun while it lasted...

Happy Birthday to me

Robb and Mo made me a birthday cake on Saturday. Mo was not really interested in helping until helping meant licking chocolate frosting off the spatula. We celebrated at Urban Barbeque in Ashton and returned to Mom's house for singing, candles, and cake. I'm still basking in the heap of lovely gifts: books, a cd, a picnic set, assorted food treats, and half a cake left over. What a nice birthday!

I dubbed last week the Week of Nagging Tasks. Robb and I scurried around taking care of things we've been putting off like renewing both our drivers licenses, stacking wood, getting blood drawn, calling the exterminator, and pricing truckloads of mulch. All things not so fun at the time but certainly nice to have in the rear view mirror.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

It's the most wonderful time of the year: PAINT. SNOW. HILL. !!!!!! *love* And now, PSH has it's own local access commercial.