Birthday Guy

June 8, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

Here is Al, sketched “without my permission!” as he put it, after a dinner party. Today is his birthday, and he has a life of unusually useful work to celebrate: years as a Civil Rights Movement lawyer in the South (the stories he can tell!), and many more years leading the ACLU’s National Prison Project. He’s usually on the road somewhere, fighting for prisoners’ rights, the abolishing of torture, and the improvement of dreadful prison conditions in the U.S. and all over the world. (He believes prisoners are human beings, which is not a universally shared opinion.)

Although Al may look like (and can be when necessary) Mr. Tough Guy, which has certainly come in handy in his work, under that rough-hewn exterior beats the heart of a cupcake. Maybe that’s a clue to his choice of profession. Also he’s an awesome chef. Happy Birthday, Al! I know you won’t have to bake your own cake.

Rites of Passage

June 5, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

From my sketchbook. It’s the season of graduations, and weddings, and the perpetual hankie in the hand and lump in the throat.

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:

I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.

A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor

Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;

How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.

—Richard Wilbur

Jude

Neverland

June 3, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

From my sketchbook. Scenes from the Washington Waldorf School end-of-year senior class production of Peter Pan two years ago. It was terrific—both exciting and hilarious. Captain Hook was played by a tiny fierce blonde. I am a fan of school plays, even those not featuring my own children. But this was an especially significant production, because the class had lost a beloved member in an auto accident, a lovely girl many of us had known since kindergarten and infancy, and the play was dedicated to her memory.

Birthday Cake

May 31, 2010 by Sheila 5 Comments

My first job out of college was as a graphic designer at a studio in Arlington, Virginia. On my lunch hour I liked to carry a sandwich and wander the small side streets of Clarendon, which is now practically unrecognizable with its spiffy high-rises, marble-and-stainless-steel condo lofts, and hot night spots. Back then it was an edgy, scruffy (and to me far more interesting) neighborhood of funky, dimly lit antique stores, second-hand bookshops, and family-owned Vietnamese groceries.

In a Vietnamese bakery one day I discovered among the unfamiliar and brightly colored sweets a collection of odd plastic toys meant for…cake decorating? Well, I don’t know, but I bought a bunch of them, and our family has made use of them for years, on birthdays and other occasions. One of them is a rather confused-looking Girl Scout in a semi-seductive pose that my husband likes to put on my cake. Hmm. I don’t know what THAT means.

Sheila

Dorothy

Memorial Day

May 30, 2010 by Sheila 2 Comments

From my sketchbook. A visit to the gravesite in Epinal of my mother’s beloved, and only, brother, a pilot shot down over France in 1944.

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My county is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

—William Butler Yeats

Ariel and Sam

Magic House of Music

May 29, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

For two years my daughter has been taking piano lessons from the artistic and ever-cheerful Emily, whose birthday it is today. And so I post a sketch of Emily’s house, one of the secret magic places in the Federal City—a green and flowery bower even in the whiteness of winter, colorful with painting, sculpture, and pottery from her hand and her travels, cozy with paisley and pillows, and suitably furnished: baby grand in the corner, dog napping on his pillow, cat queening it on the windowsill. To repose here through the Wednesday lesson is to enjoy a brief weekly vacation from stress.

Now it’s time for some music: Happy birthday, dear Emileeee, happy birthday to you!

Emily

Mystery Tree

May 27, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

One of the projects of our homeschooling Botany block, which we began just before the spring equinox (and which looks like it will continue for a year, if we want to get a rounded view of plant life) has been a Tree Study. My daughter chose a tree in its winter state, down the street on the grounds of the hotel, and we sketched its bare branches and made crayon bark rubbings. Spring arrived; we sketched other, now-budding, even flowering and leafing trees; did other bark rubbings. Our Chosen Tree remained mystifyingly and unashamedly bare in a forest of showy blossoms and new green leaves. Good grief! Was it even ALIVE? Yet the reddish branch tips were springy, not dry.

One day the tips seemed a bit longer. The next day more so. Still no green, but increasingly long. Finally each tip gently opened to reveal a glimpse of…GREEN! Then, long clusters of large, fresh leaves unrolled themselves day by day, impossibly, from the formerly slender twiggy tips. In a few days the tree bore a bright and bushy yellow-green crown wider than it was high, well worth the wait. We sketched it in its new glory. Some of you must be familiar with this type of tree, but I only recognize a handful of varieties. Our neighbor Jason, seeing the sketch, revealed its identity: it is a hornbeam.

Isadorable

May 26, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

In honor of the birthday of Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) I post this sketch of my daughter in her ballet costume, drawn about 7 years ago. I was surprised to see how many quick sketches I had made over the years of my daughter dancing, in various costumes, trailing scarves and capes and, in one case, a large feather duster. I don’t think Isadora Duncan made use of feather dusters. However, she really did have a troupe of students named the Isadorables.

Jana and Tom

To Ellen, At The South

May 25, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

A May bouquet from my sketchbook.

Ellen, a poet herself, shares a birthday with Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) so it seemed appropriate to post this poem for the two of them today. Except that Ellen is actually At The North.

To Ellen, At The South

The green grass is growing,
The morning wind is in it,
‘Tis a tune worth the knowing,
Though it change every minute.

‘Tis a tune of the spring,
Every year plays it over,
To the robin on the wing,
To the pausing lover.

O’er ten thousand thousand acres
Goes light the nimble zephyr,
The flowers, tiny feet of shakers,
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest, Saying;
“We have drest for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.

“O hasten, ‘tis our time,
Ere yet the red summer
Scorch our delicate prime,
Loved of bee, the tawny hummer.

“O pride of thy race!
Sad in sooth it were to ours,
If our brief tribe miss thy face,—
We pour New England flowers.

“Fairest! choose the fairest members
Of our lithe society;
June’s glories and September’s
Show our love and piety.

“Thou shalt command us all,
April’s cowslip, summer’s clover
To the gentian in the fall,
Blue-eyed pet of blue-eyed lover.

“O come, then, quickly come,
We are budding, we are blowing,
And the wind which we perfume
Sings a tune that’s worth thy knowing.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ellen

(Maybe by this time next year I can find one for Jeannie.)

Jean

Busy Beaver

May 24, 2010 by Sheila Leave a comment

From my sketchbook (drawn across the gutter; sorry).

On a Memorial Day weekend hike through beautiful Prince William Forest Park in Virginia a few years ago, we saw many tree stumps ending in chewed points, surrounded by piles of wood chips, indicating the presence of beavers. And when we reached the creek, we did see several beavers, as well as a substantial beaver dam. What I couldn’t understand was why the stumps were so FAR from the water. A mystery.