Despite looming deadlines, my husband and I finally celebrated our [August!] wedding anniversary with two days in Lewes, Delaware, strolling through the pretty town, hiking along the beach, relaxing and being dreadfully spoiled by the delightful owners of the beautiful Virden House B&B, whose garden I sketched.
Columbus Day is an opportunity to ponder immigration, an especially rich subject during the current election season. The image below, created for this holiday, is part of the all-media Op-Ed exhibit at the Art League Gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia. Come to the opening reception October 13th for a look at a range of opinionated work.
(click twice to enlarge)
Although it’s still summer, the first of September feels like a turning of the year, a return to school and schedules, and a farewell to cicadas and the least possible clothing. In parting I celebrate the day with a watercolor of Duck, NC, where the family just spent an idyllic week, and, attesting to the season’s ambivalence, a poem by A.E. Housman.
XXXIX (from Last Poems)
When summer’s end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.
The weathercock at sunset
Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
That looked to Wales away
And saw the last of day.
From hill and cloud and heaven
The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
And hushed the countryside,
But I had youth and pride.
And I with earth and nightfall
In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
And darkness hard at hand,
And the eye lost the land.
The year might age, and cloudy
The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
Breathed from beyond the snows,
And I had hope of those.
They came and were and are not
And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
That ever can ensue
Must now be worse and few.
So here’s an end of roaming
On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
For summer’s parting sighs,
And then the heart replies.
—A.E. Housman
Elizabeth
Creatures of air, land and sea; and a search for gifts.
Bill Elvin
Watermelons and wild waves.
Marta
A poem by Jack Peachum in celebration of a summer classic. Better stock up, as we head further into this election season. Here’s a recipe from Epicurious that includes as an ingredient a homemade mint syrup which can be used in other drinks as well.
But, surely, the tree in Eden was a giant mint plant,
promising knowledge profane and sacred,
the doorways of Eternity opening—
summer air pushes heavy around the house,
ice clicks in the teeth,
the mixture’s smell invites you in
to where the mint lies on the tongue.
And in the distance,
bourbon-taste and sugar against the palette
sweet as remembered Sunday mornings.
— Jack Peachum
Francine
A day on the Mall at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival learning about Basque music, dance, textiles, pottery, fishing, salt, and cheese.
Don your leafy crown and pagan garb and prepare to dance ’round the bonfire, for (in the Northern Hemisphere) ’tis the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, a time to celebrate our warming sun, our greening earth, and fertility in all its forms. And this shortest night is graced by a full moon, an unusual conjunction of events. Reason enough for dancing!
Don 2006
For June, a poem from As You Like It, Act II, Scene V.
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird’s throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleas’d with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
—William Shakespeare
Jan