The first of March is still winter—and yet here are the faithful snowdrops emerging beside the front walk, a perpetually hopeful sign of growing things to come. I had to run and fetch the sketchbook.
Polly
Power, Pathos, and Poetry
One of several events connected to the stunning collection of ancient Greek bronzes on exhibit through March 20th (three more weeks to get yourself down there!) at the National Gallery of Art.
A New Library
Our local well-loved and popular but shabby post-WWII Cleveland Park Library is destined for replacement, and the project has brought out library-lovers in force, many making specific requests for new features (Quiet study spaces!–Better handicapped access!–Net zero energy use!) and specific requests to keep what is currently beloved (Light, warmth, and coziness!–Wooden shelving and furniture!–Children’s room memorabilia!–Our terrific staff!).
Above all, neighbors overwhelmingly requested A Building Not Like Tenley! (a nearby brand-new library branch modern in style but also regarded as cold, dark, noisy, hard, and uncomfortable). Instead residents hoped for a warm friendly building, whether modern or traditional, compatible with the neighborhood’s 100-year-old farmhouse-style houses and the nearby art-deco theater and apartments. This is looking to be unlikely.
You can see the design concept on the Cleveland Park Library website, where it is drawn considerably better than in my cartoon above.
Dad
February Festivals
A happy sequence of events, all signifying that we are now halfway through the winter: The First of February, Groundhog Day/Candlemas, and Setsubun. This means that, although there are still heaps of snow along every sidewalk and intersection, we can celebrate with crêpes, candle-making, watching one of our favorite movies, eating sushi rolls, and tossing beans into the garden. Happy February! Wishing you much joy and no demons!
Anna
Corinne
Snow, Blessed Snow
A sketch from the studio window, and a poem I post in thanks for this brief interlude of beauty and silence.
Snow,
blessed snow,
comes out of the sky
like bleached flies.
The ground is no longer naked.
The ground has on its clothes.
The trees poke out of sheets
and each branch wears the sock of God.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
I bite it.
Someone once said:
Don’t bite till you know
if it’s bread or stone.
What I bite is all bread,
rising, yeasty as a cloud.
There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail.
—Anne Sexton
Salome
Celebration
So fittingly on this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we listened to many touching, fascinating, and funny reminiscences during the moving celebration of Al Bronstein. This is a man who infused all his life’s undertakings—from social justice to education to family life to fabulous cooking—with his fierce determination, courage, brilliance, humor and kindness. Thank you, Al.
Matilda
Susan
Hark!
For Christmas Day, a painting and a poem. Merry Christmas, everyone, as we go onward together holding hands, listening for angels.
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.
— Gary Johnson
Ann
Stephanie
Noah
Nevin
Tony
After a fall of snow
In celebration of this shortest day, this longest night of the year, a poem by May Sarton, and a chair in the National Cathedral Bishop’s Garden, painted during a snowier winter than this one looks to be.
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we’ll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
—May Sarton
Turkey Tales
When I go to the gym, there are always multiple TVs on, so from visit to visit I get a glimpse of several news threads at once, although never the whole story. In the past few days, I saw each of these.
David
Gideon
Nelson Mandela 1918-2013
Approach Of Winter
A picture, and a poem, for the first of December.
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.
—William Carlos Williams
Melissa
Chuck