I was lucky to visit the two most iconic US national parks over the last few years—Grand Canyon and Yellowstone.
I’m now realizing that trying to paint landscapes based on any of those photos is just going to be frustrating. Those views are just too beautiful to be rendered by an amateur painter. I should just be happy I got so many great photos with my cell phone. My pics take me back to the actual feeling of awe.
I want to try another landscape at some point, but need to try something more humble.
Really not happy with this. I’ll keep it out as a way of hopefully learning from it.
This area is called “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” in Yellowstone National Park.
I have been patiently waiting for a magnolia blossom to fall off my neighbor’s tree. Yesterday, it happened. I found a blossom in the grass on my walk and brought it home.
It lasted about a day in a small dish of water.
On Day 2, I attempted a technique that was demonstrated in my watercolors class, but it didn’t really work. The idea is to press flowers and leaves into wet paint and get an interesting effect. You can also paint the veiny side of a leaf and press that onto white paper.
The image was not really recognizable as a flower after I pulled it off the wet paint. I ended up painting in some petals.
One thing about being older is that you have so very many snippets of songs, poems, sayings and jingles floating around in your head. Literally decades worth of popular culture is lodged in the ole memory. Half the time, you can’t remember why or from where you know something.
Apparently “April Showers Bring May Flowers” is a saying from England that dates back to at least the 1550s. Imagine. That saying has been kicking around the English-speaking world for over 450 years.
The flowers that bloom in the spring,
tra-la.
OK, just Googled and that’s from The Mikado, which makes sense. I was in that show in high school (embarrassingly, in full yellowface). Gilbert & Sullivan are responsible for a great deal of brain clutter in older people who like musical theater.
Springtime for Hitler and GER-MA-NY
I wish that one from The Producers would leave me, but it just won’t. Must be lodged too deep in the grey matter.
Spring in general has more songs, poems, and sayings than all the other seasons combined. Don’t you think?
What pops into your head when you experience the miracle of spring where you are?
I’ve posted a couple times about my trip to the Soviet Union in college. I was with a group of students and history professors. It was a big deal to go “behind the iron curtain” back then, so we prepped for this trip for many months—studying Russian history and learning how to behave in a communist country. (They didn’t want any of us to end up in a Siberian prison camp.)
In addition to stopping in Helsinki (Finland) on the way into the USSR, we stopped in Budapest (Hungary) on the way out. Back then, Hungary was firmly part of the Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc. And we happened to be there in the immediate aftermath of an epic snowstorm. Other than the snow and total paralysis of transportation on the streets, I remember kind people and one particularly delicious hot meal in a restaurant with some young musicians who gave us a cassette tape of their rock band.
In light of the recent good news that Hungarians dumped their far-right leader Viktor Orbán (a buddy of both Trump and Putin) on Sunday, I dug out my Budapest pics. Google describes Budapest in 1987 like this:
Budapest in 1987 was a city in late-communist Hungary characterized by economic scarcity, socialist architecture, and a quiet, daily struggle, yet it was on the cusp of major political change. The city experienced a historic, paralyzing snowstorm in January 1987 and was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site that same year.
I’m not in any of these photos, but I took all of them. None are particularly good, but as a group, they give you the vibe.
Fun fact: Budapest is actually two cities—Buda and Pest. In this pic, I’m standing in Buda looking over the frozen Danube River towards Pest. The large domed building on the far side is the Hungarian Parliament in Pest. (Pronounced PESHT)
The famous Fisherman’s Bastion is a fairytale-like, Neo-Romanesque lookout built between 1895 and 1902.
An Aeroflot route map in a Budapest window. (We flew sketchy Aeroflot into Russia.)
My friend Lincoln standing in an alcove in Budapest.
My friend Rob playing a balalaika at the Budapest airport.
Walking was the only option for seeing anything at all while we were there! The city was paralyzed with snow and the authorities really couldn’t deal with it.
Two of our professors at the Budapest airport. The one on the right, Dr. James West, taught Russian history and was one of the best teachers I ever had. He’s one of the reasons I majored in History.
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.
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 snowbankI 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).
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.
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.
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.
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