stickwork sculpture

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Brushing my teeth with my left hand is getting very old. Although my right hand, which was injured so badly on October 1st, is making a lot of progress in its healing, I’m still waiting for new skin to completely cover the worst/last spot on the edge of my palm. And while I can use most of the fingers now, my pinkie still winces when I put any pressure on it. But I did manage to chop an onion on my own and drive the car a couple of days ago.

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Been feeling very frustrated and lethargic this week, and spending way too much time watching TV. I think I’ve caught just about every news conference our governor has called to update Connecticut residents on the very slow progress the utility crews are making restoring power. As of this morning, 200,000+ customers are still without electricity, seven days after the storm. A couple of times Gov. Malloy has said that the last time we had a storm like this in October was never…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
Janet ~ 10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Janet and I spent an afternoon at the Florence Griswold Museum a couple of weeks ago – it seems so much longer ago – and I will resume posting pictures of the fairy tale birdhouses soon. But for now I’m sharing a few pictures of a stickwork sculpture that was also on the museum grounds. The artist is Patrick Dougherty at Stickwork. His website lists other places he has installations. We were enchanted! (I wonder if it survived the storm!)

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

along the river

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
Lieutenant River ~ 10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

It’s snowing like crazy outside, after four hours of rain. The changeover has occurred a lot sooner than predicted, so I’m happy we got up early and finished our errands before the October nor’easter made it here. I bought new slippers while we were out and my feet are delightfully warm and happy now. Time for a few more fairy tale birdhouses!

The Florence Griswold Museum sits on the banks of the Lieutenant River, pictured above. As you can see, the grass is still a summery green and the colors have not changed on all the trees yet. And it is now snowing – three seasons all in the same week. Janet has decided that the Lieutenant River will be a good place to have my first kayaking lesson in the spring.

#7. “The Sea King’s Palace” by Susan Zirlen & Mahady Makrianes (in honor of Pete, a prince among men), based on The Little Mermaid.

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

#9. “Neverland Adventures” by Kristen Thornton, based on Peter Pan.
London, where Peter, Wendy, Michael and John are searching for Peter’s shadow…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Captain Hook has captured Tinkerbell…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

#10. “Up a Tree” by Sue Chism, based on Sinbad the Sailor.
Giant birds wrecked Sinbad’s ship…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

and kidnapped him…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

#12. “The Troll Bridge Saga” by Sheila Wertheimer & The Museum’s Garden Gang, based on Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Of course this is my favorite fairy tale because it’s Norwegian…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

That was a freaky hungry troll “under” the bridge!

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Tomorrow we’re having a Going Away/Halloween party for Nate & Shea and the gang. Cooking two vegetarian slow cooker dinners. Maybe there will be a goblin or two who aren’t camera-shy…

of feathers and fairy tales: enchanted birdhouses at the museum

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Janet and I had a lovely time yesterday at the Florence Griswold Museum, The Home of American Impressionism, in Old Lyme, Connecticut.  We were there to see a delightful temporary outdoor exhibit.  Following Miss Griswold’s favorite cats, Padjkins and Toto, we were led on a meandering tour of 43 whimsical fairy-tale-birdhouse creations.  A couple of hours later and tuckered out, we were wondering why on earth cats like to take the longest possible route from one place to another.

#1. “Thump!” by Julie Solz & Steve Hansen, based on The Wizard of Oz.  Follow the yellow brick road…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

#4. “Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, Zzzzzzzz!” by Donna Carlson & Georgann Ritter, based on Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs.  This scene seems to be part of a magnificent Cut Leaf European Beech tree…

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

#21. “Out on a Limb” by Brad Painter & Nora MacDonnell, based on The Swiss Family Robinson.

10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
10.26.11 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut

Although there are too many pictures (249!) to share here, I will try to add a few more of my favorites, in no predictable order, for a few more posts in the near future.  Stay tuned!

rosemaling

rosemaling by Frode Inge Helland
rosemaling by Frode Inge Helland

The new email subscription widget that Nate installed seems to be working now. Tim subscribed last night and he got a confirmation back and I got a confirmation notice for his subscription this morning. (It may have come while I was sleeping…) Please let me know if you have any problems.

Is anyone using the RSS feed? Wondering if that is working for those who get posts through that feed.

along came a spider

"Little Miss Muffet" by John Everett Millais
“Little Miss Muffet” by John Everett Millais

This morning started off with a blood-curdling scream – mine. I was minding my own business, loading the dishwasher, when I turned to glance at the clock – and there, dangling right in front of my nose, a spider hanging from the ceiling on his thread. Now I won’t tell you how big he was because I have no objectivity when it comes to spiders, and anyway, as far as spiders are concerned, size makes not one iota of difference. They all loom large in my consciousness!

Well, it didn’t take long for the knight-in-shining-armor, well, the knight-still-in-his-pajamas, who had been minding his own business working from home today – thank goodness! – to scramble down the stairs ready for battle. What he found was a woman cornered by the sink, wielding a dirty spatula most ineffectively. He performed the required deed swiftly and promised the poor spider an honorable burial at sea. After giving a warm hug and some soothing words to the lady-in-distress, he went back upstairs and a moment later I heard the toilet flush.

As I returned to cleaning up after breakfast and waiting for my adrenaline to stop pumping, I decided that perhaps it was time to share my spider saga with my readers – one never knows from where inspiration for a blog will come!

It all began when I was about three years old, although my parents are a bit hazy about the time frame. We had moved into the house they built in the woods when I was three, and I was still young enough to be playing outside in the summer with no shirt on… I was sitting on the front porch when a spider let itself down on a thread from the gutter, landed on my bare back, and started to bite me. I started screaming and running away and around the house, my parents chasing after me and trying to figure out what was wrong with me. When they finally caught me and discovered the problem, one of them said, “Oh – it’s only a spider.” I’m not sure I ever saw the culprit on my back, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been highly sensitive, and from that moment on developed a profound fear of spiders. In my childish brain I couldn’t understand how “only a spider” could inflict so much pain and terror.

Unfortunately for me, spiders are strangely attracted to me and they actually do seek me out. Must be my pheromones or something, but as anybody who has ever spent any time with me will affirm, they do manage to come to me while ignoring all other humans in the vicinity. They usually drop down from the ceiling, but once I was lying on my bed reading when one popped up at the foot of the bed and started charging straight for me. Once I was on a treadmill at the gym, where the ceiling was at least two stories high, and one dropped down from it, right in front of my nose, causing me to panic and stumble and make Tim, on the treadmill next to me, wonder why on earth I was suddenly flailing around.

Now I know spider encounters are supposed to be messages from the universe that I need to pay more attention to my creativity. Believe me, I have the best of intentions to stay calm and appreciate the message the next time I see a spider, but they always startle me and the outcome is always irrational panic.

The spider nightmares began in 1972, when I was 15. I suppose they were an expression of the anxiety I felt about moving to a foreign country with my family. I had never moved before, and had never been overseas, not even for a trip. We were to take an ocean liner from New York City bound for Athens, Greece the next day. We were spending our last night stateside in an aunt’s one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan, and we were packed in like sardines sleeping on cots – all the women in the bedroom, all the men in the living room. Many relations had come to see us off.

Well, in the middle of the night I “woke up” to see a spider coming down from the ceiling toward me. Naturally I screamed! The light came on and I pointed to it. A bunch of groggy aunts, my mom and my sister were asking, “what? where?” I pointed and pointed but no one could see it and they finally concluded that I was having a nightmare. Eventually I didn’t see it any more and realized it had to have been a dream. These spider nightmares have been with me off and on ever since.

It’s amazing sometimes that no matter how well you think you may know another person there is always something new to learn. Tim & I were married in 1975 and that is when I met my sister-in-law, Fran, and we have been as close as sisters ever since. Somehow one evening in 2007, 32 years after we met, Fran and I got to talking about dreams and made the startling discovery that we both have had the same recurring spider dreams! While having this dream we are both convinced that we are awake and keep pointing (sleep-pointing?) to the spider as it moves across the wall or ceiling, trying to convince whoever is in the room with us that it is actually there and being frustrated that the other person can’t see it. If alone in the room, a blood-curdling scream brings someone in soon enough. Only half-jokingly I theorized that in past lives we must have both been eaten by a spider and were somehow destined to be linked in this life, too, by marrying two brothers. Fran decided that we had been flies…

So those are the highlights of my spider tale. There have been too many real encounters and dream encounters to ever possibly tell them all, but that’s enough of this subject for one day!

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

science, mystery, wonder

zebras by Gary M. Stolz
zebras by Gary M. Stolz

Science is not meant to cure us of mystery, but to reinvent and reinvigorate it. … I love science, and it pains me to think that so many are terrified of the subject or feel that choosing science means you cannot also choose compassion, or the arts, or be awed by nature.
~ Robert Sapolsky
(Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers)

keeping the channel open

“The Dancer” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir
“The Dancer” by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
~ Martha Graham
(Dance to the Piper)

a new science of complexity

“A Paradox” by Frances MacDonald
“A Paradox” by Frances MacDonald

There is a new science of complexity which says that the link between cause and effect is increasingly difficult to trace; that change (planned or otherwise) unfolds in non-linear ways; that paradoxes and contradictions abound; and that creative solutions arise out of diversity, uncertainty and chaos.
~ Andy Hargreaves & Michael Fullan
(What’s Worth Fighting for Out There?)