From a long-ago and somewhat yellowed sketchbook, when my son was about four, sharing a straw hat with his Daddy on the beach. Happy Fathers Day, all you fathers out there.
With my father I would watch dawn over green fields.—Kobayashi Issa
Evan
Romy
Our family spent a morning along the Potomac River at River Farm, the 25-acre headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. The AHS provides gardening information through programs for adults and children, and is a very lovely setting for a quiet stroll. River Farm itself has an interesting history, which I will cover in more detail in a later post.
Bryant
I’ll bet you thought I was about to announce an alternative to fossil fuels, or at least an exciting new political candidate.
No, tonight is the opening reception for a new exhibition in the Bob Hope Gallery at the Library of Congress on which my husband has been working for the past several months. It’s one of many history exhibitions he’s created for the LOC over the years. Hope for America: Performers, Politics & Pop Culture explores the involvement of entertainers in politics throughout the 20th century, often through satirical commentary, sometimes through direct participation. There is also a moving segment on Hope’s work for the USO entertaining troops all over the world, which he did for SEVENTY YEARS. The exhibition features film and television clips and radio broadcasts as well as photos, letters, sheet music, and other artifacts to tell the story.
If you are in the DC area, come visit! I’ll bet you could use a few belly laughs. (This is the cover of the brochure I designed for the exhibit.)
Agnès
From my sketchbook. The neighborhood pool has opened, and one of its most attractive features is the large flowering potted plants. They have done well in the recent rainfall. Watch out.
Erna
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
—John Masefield
My mother shared with my husband a deep love of sailing ships and the sea, as well as sea-related poetry and books. They discovered together and passed back and forth the entire Patrick O’Brien series, set aboard ship during the Napoleonic Wars. (My mother was convinced she had been a cabin boy in some past life and had drowned off the White Horse Reef.)
At her memorial service, my dear husband, never one to stand up and speak before a crowd, decided to read aloud in my mother’s honor this poignant and evocative poem they both love, written by John Masefield (1878-1967), whose birthday it is today. For me now my mother and my husband are forever within its lines.
Jan
My husband has a widget on his desktop with which he tracks the weather in his favorite places. Orcas Island, in Washington state. Montpelier, Vermont. Paris, France. And Dublin, Ireland, where for the last couple of weeks it’s been sunny, with a high in the low 70s.
The weather we experienced in Ireland was more like this (above). Beautiful, but “soft.” As they say, there is no bad weather; only the wrong clothes.
Anne
Thanks to my tech-savvy son, my Ireland sketchbook is now up on my website. This is the first page, and you can look at the rest here. I hope it will be followed by other sketchbooks soon.
Justin
In honor of Earth Day.
From my sketchbook. My husband regarding the earth from a Shenandoah Valley peak.
Today is Earth Day, a day on which we attempt to recall that Mother Earth is the source of all life and nourishment and that we ought to stop greedily stuffing ourselves with her resources and dumping toxic waste all over her. Human beings are clearly a bunch of sloppy ungrateful thankless brats. What’s a mother to do? Lose her cool? Blow her top?
A holiday to celebrate the Earth was proposed in 1969 by peace activist John McConnell and was originally, and logically, intended to be celebrated on the Equinox, around March 22nd. In fact the first Earth Day WAS celebrated on March 22nd, 1970, in San Francisco, California.
However, U.S. Senator Gayelord Nelson of Wisconsin had, coincidentally, planned an environmental awareness day to take place that same year, on April 22nd. This event coordinated the efforts of a number of autonomous grass-roots environmental groups who had been working independently of one another on different issues for a while—air and water pollution, oil spills, pesticides, loss of green space, extinction of species, various other environmental disasters—and who recognized their common purpose. The April 22nd event received more attention and thus determined the future “official” date. It was a movement in embryo just waiting for its birthday. Millions participated in the celebration, all over the country.
Only a few years earlier Rachel Carson had been vilified for her condemnation of DDT; now the brand-new Environmental Protection Agency burst onto the scene. Then the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Followed by a slew of environmental legislation: The Clean Air Act. The Water Pollution Control Act. The Safe Drinking Water Act. The Endangered Species Act. The Toxic Substances Control Act. Then we got fuel efficiency standards for cars. That one’s been harder for Americans to get used to, given their love of enormous cars, and their increasingly enormous rear ends. It’s amazing how quickly things moved along in the first decade (grinding to a standstill and retreating for a while in the 80s under the Reagan “You’ve Seen One Tree You’ve Seen Them All” administration).
In 1990 Earth Day was declared an annual national holiday, and it went global. Now it’s a huge international event marked by every conceivable environment-friendly related activity. “The environment” is no longer a fringe issue. We recycle, we compost, we buy organic, we conserve water, we take public transportation, we use the energy-efficient bulbs with their repellent prison-like glow. (I am told they are getting better.) Living green is not only socially acceptable; it’s a Madison Avenue device to sell more products (kind of defeats the goal of preserving the environment). The White House, the EPA, the National Park Service, Greenpeace, National Geographic, every community large and small (except perhaps the NRA), you name it, has its Earth Day events, publicized on their websites, through which citizens can do something to educate themselves and/or make a difference. I am going to tell my own neighbors about two of them right now:
April 22nd, 2010: 7:00pm at the Cleveland Park Library, Melanie Choukas-Bradley, author of City of Trees, will give a talk about the botanical history and diversity of Washington, DC. For more information, please call (202) 282-3080.
April 24th, 2010: 9 to 11am, a neighborhood ivy-pulling-and-trash-cleanup event in the park along Rock Creek Drive and Normanstone Drive. All ages. For more information, please email woodlandnormanstoneneighbors@gmail.com.
I hope you are finding a useful and jolly community event in your own neighborhood. And remember…“every day is Earth Day.”
Gunilla
Hasse
Ruthie
Chris
