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
Some quickie sketches during our traditional family outing on this day, to celebrate the USA’s birthday along with local dancers and drummers, librarians and launderettes, politicians, piping policemen, and puppy dogs. Happy Fourth of July, everyone!
Melinda
Writer Richard Meryman speaking at the National Gallery of Art. Excerpts from recordings of years of conversations with Andrew Wyeth, and others, are woven into Meryman’s latest book, Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-Portrait.
Think of the now-passed-away artist you greatly admire, and imagine being able to listen to him/her voicing thoughts about life, art, work.
Father Larry Madden
For Mothers Day, the family is obliged to go on an outing of my choosing, and this year it was the beautiful gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, all dressed up in their spring finery. Here my husband and daughter find an unusual rest stop above the cutting garden west of the Prunus Walk.
And also for Mothers Day, a poem by George Bilgere, “Laundry,” of which I did none today.
My mother stands in this black
And white arrangement of shadows
In the sunny backyard of her marriage,
Struggling to pin the white ghosts
Of her family on the line.
I watch from my blanket on the grass
As my mother’s blouses lift and billow,
Bursting with the day.
My father’s white work shirts
Wave their empty sleeves at me,
And my own little shirts and pants
Flap and exult like flags
In the immaculate light.
It is mid-century, and the future lies
Just beyond the white borders
Of this snapshot; soon that wind
Will get the better of her
And her marriage. Soon the future
I live in will break
Through those borders and make
A photograph of her-but
For now the shirts and blouses
Are joyous with her in the yard
As she stands with a wooden clothespin
In her mouth, struggling to keep
The bed sheets from blowing away.
—George Bilgere
Martha
Two weeks on call for the U.S. District Court. One of the principal benefits of jury duty is that the courthouses are all in the neighborhood of the National Gallery of Art.
Hallie