Photography

Bread offering

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

At certain points during his recovery from his first total knee replacement, my husband described me to others as an “Angel of Mercy.” Believe me, he is not one to toss out religious metaphors (nor am I particularly angelic), but he was in so much pain, that I apparently glowed with an angelic light and golden halo as I fetched his ice and doled out his Oxy.

Now that he feels better, but total knee replacement #2 is less than one week away, I’m wondering if I’ll achieve “Angel of Mercy” status again. Our joke is that there’s an equal chance I’ll be more of an Annie Wilkes from Stephen King’s Misery (famously played by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film) this time around. We even joke that if he totally annoys me, I’ll use the mallet we have around to break up bags of ice and the foam roller from PT to “hobble” him like poor James Caan in the film.

If you know, you know.

Given the Annie Wilkes possibility, he’s been extra helpful these past few days. Cooking, fixing stuff, and baking many loaves of his incredible homemade bread. It’s soooo good.

Perfect loaf
Fresh from the oven

The bread offering is appreciated and has been duly noted. I do love homemade bread.

😇

It’s cold in here

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments

Yesterday our furnace died. Maybe the blizzard was just too much to keep up with, but it was only 14 years old. It should’ve had a few more years left. Note to everyone: never buy a Maytag furnace. We had several other problems with it before its untimely death.

Fortunately, my husband got right on it and we’re having a new one installed this morning. (K’Ching$$$) In the meantime, it’s cold in here! I’m thinking it’s about 45 degrees Fahrenheit, but I have my coffee and my Comfy, I’ll be fine.

Last night we lit a fire in our fireplace and I made s’mores and then put them on top of ice cream for mixing in. It took some effort to crush the s’more and fully mix it with the ice cream, but I did it. It was good. Not as good as the best mix-in I ever invented, but yummy.

The chocolate didn’t melt as much as I would’ve like, but I managed.

Here are some of my post-blizzard pics from Tuesday.

This is the snowbank at the TOP of my driveway—right next to the house. I’m 5’ 8.5” so that’s a lot of snow. The plow guy has no other place else to pile it all up. There’s a flower garden under there, which I’m worried about. Note: I had to balance my phone on a trashcan with my mitten and use “timer” to take this photo. That’s real skill.
My aptly named street
Neighborhood snowbank
I can’t tell if this mailbox is still attached to its post. Sometimes the plows knock off mailboxes and people just shove them into the snowbanks until they can be repaired. People then try to make the town do the repairs, but I know from experience, it’s easier to do it yourself.

In all, we got about 12-14 inches of new snow, but Rhode Island really got slammed. They beat their Blizzard of ‘78 record, with 35” inches in Providence (38” at the airport).

Related post:

Blizzards of Yore

My first boss is in the Epstein files

~ MaryG ~ 10 Comments

One of my old friends from my first job at the contemporary art museum reached out with news that our old boss is in the Epstein files and has resigned his current position in disgrace.

ArtNews coverage

NYT coverage

I can’t say I’m totally surprised.

David A. Ross is not accused of assaulting anyone in the files, but there’s evidence of him being very sweet and supportive to Jeffrey Epstein, even after Epstein served jail time for felony prostitution in Florida. Clearly, David wanted Epstein’s money for his museum exhibitions (including a very questionable one involving photographs of minors) and an ill-fated magazine project. David claims that he fell for “Epstein’s lie that he was being framed for these crimes as political retaliation for supporting Bill Clinton.”

I did a deep dive and found some other accusations about David from the contemporary art world, one involving another person that I worked with.

So, there you go. One of the biggest personalities from my early twenties—an influential arts leader who helped envision not one but two major contemporary art museums in Massachusetts—was also an unethical creep.

How the mighty do fall.

My old boss (back to camera) chatting with a bunch of guests at an exhibition opening in the late 1980s.

Related post:

1989

Watercolors—botanicals 10

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments

These are the last few pages in my botanicals “Watercolor Workbook” by Sarah Simon, a very thoughtful Christmas gift from my daughter.

It was great because it kept me painting through January and February in this very cold and snowy Winter of the Knee, where we’ve mostly just stayed home. (Part 2 of The Year of the Knee—aka “The Other Knee”—is now scheduled for March 16. 🙄)

I enjoyed inking the pre-printed designs with my new artists pens and learned a few good techniques for painting flowers and foliage. Also, I got a lot of useful color mixing information. Each page preserves my color recipes, which will be convenient for future reference.

Finally, hurray for flowers and plants! I’m bad at growing them, but they’re fun to draw, paint. and photograph.

🌺🌿🌷🌻🌼🪴🌱🌸

“Lady Lily” and her little cat 🐈‍⬛
Cosmos and Magnolias
This design is called “Plant Lady Besties” 😊
February flowers from BloomsyBox.com
Did you notice that iPhone has hidden “portrait mode” in a new place? I had to Google where to find it.

Thoughts on Super Bowl LX

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Coincidentally, I’m LX too—same as the Super Bowl.

Last night was a bummer for Pats fans, but hey…nobody ever expected them to make it to the Super Bowl this year. It’s just too bad they were never really in the game. Husband disappointed, but not crushed.

On the bright side, Bad Bunny was awesome. I closed the activity ring on my Apple Watch dancing along. No, I didn’t understand most of the Spanish, but I liked the vibe. My favorite part was the ending where they came dancing straight towards the camera flying all the flags of the Americas.

“The only thing more powerful than hate is love” was the message on the screen above the flags.

It definitely felt like a big F U to Trump and ICE and all that they represent—white nationalism, hate, fear.

And apparently Trump took it like that.

It’s rich that a man who has been credibly accused of raping a 13-year old is complaining that salsa dancing is too “disgusting” for children to watch.

I took my family to Puerto Rico in 2016, because I really wanted to see it. We liked it a lot. Ahead of that trip, I tried to learn some Spanish with an online language learning program through my library. I gained a lot of words, but no real fluency. I did the same thing before a trip to Mexico.

Bad Bunny made me want to give it another shot at some point.

My kids and me on a street in San Juan in 2016
A very hot kitty resting in a tree trunk in Old San Juan in the summer of 2016
A stop on the way to El Yunque National Rainforest in Puerto Rico

Final thought: Brandi Carlile did a beautiful version of America the Beautiful—it would make a much better national anthem.

Thursday Doors—Milan’s Duomo

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

With the Milan-Cortina Olympics about to start, we’re going to be seeing many shots of Milan’s iconic Gothic-style Duomo.

This reminds me that I visited Milan in 1985 with my friend Julie during our semester abroad in Italy. We climbed up to the rooftop terraces of the Duomo. Back then, you didn’t need reservations or special tickets to go up.

I love it when photographic evidence of my foggy memories actually exists!

Here’s a photo I took of Julie taking a photo through a doorway atop the Duomo in Milan 40+ years ago. Julie is a great photographer so I’m sure she got a wonderful, artistic shot. But I like my pic too. Her red coat looks cool. And you can see some of the over-the-top decorative elements of the roof. Those endless spires remind me of wet, drippy sandcastles.

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors.

Winter 2026

~ MaryG ~ 19 Comments

This is the first winter in forever that I’m not going to Florida for at least a week. I’m staying here in the cold with my husband—and his new knee—for the entire winter. And it sure is a cold and snowy one. We have a huge snow bank in our driveway and major icicles hanging off our roof. I’m worried about ice dams causing leaking into the house (so far, so good).

There’s a garden under that huge pile of snow. The plow guy has no other place to put the snow. I hope at least some of the plants survive.

On the bright side: I get to see my granddaughter today 😁 Also, the Patriots are in the Super Bowl, which is a big plus if you’re married to a huge Pats fan. The Super Bowl is on his birthday too. Also, my church is hosting an Emma’s Revolution concert Friday to benefit a local immigrant and refugee justice organization. It’s going to be fun.

Yesterday, I watched some of the congressional testimony from people whose lives have been ruined by ICE, including Renee Good’s two heartbroken brothers. Not a single Republican congressperson attended the hearing. I watched Aliyah Rachman—a woman with a traumatic brain injury—testify to the most horrific capture and treatment by ICE that you could possibly imagine. The conditions in the detention centers are subhuman, with living human beings referred to as “bodies.” Watch her testimony here.

My husband has signed on to get his other knee replaced in mid-March, so that’s going to….in a word…suck.

But back to the bright side: we moved an old treadmill from the unfinished side of the basement to the “nice” side of the basement and it still works fine. So I can “take a walk” even when the weather prevents me from going outside. I’m currently rewatching the entire original Sex and the City series while I’m treadmilling. I’m on Season 3.

I’m getting closer to the end of my watercolor botanicals workbook and I decided I’d like to keep learning in a class with a teacher. Last night I found a class at a different community arts center (even closer to my house than where I took my first watercolors class last fall). There was just one opening left, so I registered. I had hesitated to register earlier, because the class focuses on learning to paint one particular subject, which sounded kind of silly. But last night as I watched All Creatures Great and Small on PBS, I decided that painting “soft, cute and fluffy baby farm animals” might be just what I need in the Winter of 2026.

Peony and wildflowers from my Watercolors Workbook