Because the weather has been unusually cool, spring is moving in slowly, so it’s not too late to stroll along the gorgeous bluebell walk at Riverbend Park. When we hiked the path Sunday, there were quite a few still in rose-colored-bud stage, and a dozen other less showy wildflowers opening up as well.
Alex
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.
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
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
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
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
Thanks to Mary Quattlebaum, it was a splendid Sunday afternoon spent among new books and their authors and illustrators, including Laura Elliott speaking about her new book on Ginevra de’ Benci.
Aunt Marge
I am sorry about two things: first, that Swedish mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter is a mere tiny purple splotch in this sketch; and second, that I didn’t know until too late that she also would be singing—among other things—Simon and Garfunkel later in November at the Library of Congress.
Joe
Erna
On my zoo walk this morning by the elephant house, I didn’t know I would be saying goodbye to Kandula, whose birth in 2001 I remember.
Below, I post a sketch from December 2004, when Kandula was three years old.
Some of the cards from my seasonal-still life paintings have been picked up by Johnson’s Florist and Garden Center on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, DC. Please take a look when you stop by for your flowers…
Marcia
