she lay down
At her feet we've gathered morel mushrooms. Morels love to sprout under old apple trees. In the photo above you can see her branch that broke off last year in the foreground.
We think she lay down to rest in the 40 mph wind (64 km per hour) Wednesday, without our knowing. I walked out today in the fresh snow, and there she was. She died quietly in our sleep.
See the stump on the left? The bark broke right off, leaving a hollow that we'd like to preserve for the chickens Don has ordered to arrive in April. When they're outside the coop, out in the fenced pen, they will like to crawl into our dear old woman's skin to get out of the sun.
I would also like to build something else with her wood. And see the "S" reaching up? Don thinks that would make a nice perch inside the henhouse.
Thanks to Swedehart and Loring, I learned about the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Pine Tree." It's short, you can read it in a few minutes:
"If I only could have been happy while I had the chance to be."
band meridian
Our son Peter's band Meridian has been lined up for Concert TV for the month of April. Peter (lead guitar), Brian (singer), Mark (drums) and Mike (bass guitar) are polishing up their first album as a full band (one previous album, One Week Epiphany, was released as the duo Westrin & Mowry).
Their influences are Travis, U2, Keane, Crowded House.
You can listen to the track "Listen to Your Breaking Heart":
They've just come out with this t-shirt, which was a hot commodity at Harper's tonight. I was lucky to get one before the co-eds swarmed the stage.
I'll let you know when the album is out!
Their influences are Travis, U2, Keane, Crowded House.
You can listen to the track "Listen to Your Breaking Heart":
They've just come out with this t-shirt, which was a hot commodity at Harper's tonight. I was lucky to get one before the co-eds swarmed the stage.
I'll let you know when the album is out!
clementine
We have been given colors so expressive,
that taking them in, we learn a new language.
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Have you tasted orange, like this?
Have you felt
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courage on your tongue?
And have you spoken that truth?
perspective
Listening to presidential hopefuls and starting to write short fiction this week have me thinking about perspective, and perception. Oh, and two posts ago hearing your differing opinions about Zaha Hadid's modern aluminum and glass architectural concept in a row of traditional brick university buildings.
Barack Obama is our savior. Barack Obama is no different from any other politician. He could transform the image of America. He will not change anything.
Eckhart Tolle said that if you were born into precisely the same circumstances as another person, you would make the same choices they have made. Well, you could never prove that one, could you?
What creates our perspective? How much of it is conscious choice? How much is default reaction based on how we were raised? How much is based on educating ourselves, being exposed to someone else's perspective?
If I could zoom in on one little piece of the canvas in this evolving life, I'd like to work on taking myself less seriously while being more open to someone else's perspective.
How can I take myself too seriously when yesterday I:
- made coffee - water in, grounds in - without putting the pot in its spot: yeah, coffee overflowing onto the floor
- getting ready to color my own hair last night, instead of mixing the activating cream with the TINT, I mixed it with the CONDITIONER, in other words, a waste of seven bucks and an hour's time
It was a full moon yesterday. Does that change things?
when the cold winds blow
When it's 15°F, -2°F wind chill (-10°C, -19°C wind chill) like today, we keep the wood stove blazing. We also have a furnace that burns propane, but our goal is to keep the heat turned down in the rest of the house when we're in the family room where the wood stove is.
We were excited to receive a bill for renting the propane tank, because that means we used less than 700 gallons for one year (you have to pay rental for the tank only if you burn less than 700 gallons annually).
The building on the right here is the corncrib, where we store firewood, not corn.
Bishop joined me outside, after she ran out of the garage where she spent the night on her heated bed (she is a barn cat; believe me, she loves her outdoor life. Have I told you she is a marvelous huntress?) She looks fat, but that is all winter coat. Every night when I'm in the hot tub, she comes to my corner and nuzzles and cuddles with me, even though my hand is wet and it gets her fur icy after a few minutes in the frigid air. We love each other.
The fire finally blazed. We're hibernating in our warm house this weekend.
We were excited to receive a bill for renting the propane tank, because that means we used less than 700 gallons for one year (you have to pay rental for the tank only if you burn less than 700 gallons annually).
The building on the right here is the corncrib, where we store firewood, not corn.
This morning I couldn't get the logs to light in the wood stove. They glowed, but they wouldn't blaze. Don was sleeping, and I was determined to do this myself. Did I have the logs too close together? Too far apart?
See this copper cauldron with logs in it? It's from our days in İstanbul, when Don sold copper to the U.S.
Bishop joined me outside, after she ran out of the garage where she spent the night on her heated bed (she is a barn cat; believe me, she loves her outdoor life. Have I told you she is a marvelous huntress?) She looks fat, but that is all winter coat. Every night when I'm in the hot tub, she comes to my corner and nuzzles and cuddles with me, even though my hand is wet and it gets her fur icy after a few minutes in the frigid air. We love each other.
We load up the sled every two or three days, depending on how much we're home.
When Don was laid up after shoulder surgery, I was the sole firewood gatherer.
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Now he's using his arm very well, gathering wood and doing other things that don't require heavy lifting. So we are back to sharing this task.
The fire finally blazed. We're hibernating in our warm house this weekend.Zaha Hadid
Zaha Hadid (photo from this site)
If you scroll down to the bottom three photos in this post, you'll see the exterior and interior of the building where I work, Morrill Hall. It's one of the oldest buildings on our campus, built around the turn of the 19th century. Students and professors either love it or hate it. It's old, decrepit, plain, and well, I love it. It will be torn down one of these days, because they say it's too decrepit to bear repair.
In about two years, just down the block from Morrill Hall along Grand River Ave., in a row of similarly traditional university halls, a world-class 26,000 square foot art museum shown in these renderings will be completed.
Zaha Hadid, world-renowned Iraqi-British architect and winner of the Pritzker Architectural Prize, created the winning design for the museum that will house modern and contemporary art. Hadid is the only woman architect to win the Pritzker, comparable to the Nobel prize in architectural circles. Her work is known for pushing the boundaries of architectural and urban design.
Thanks to Loring who brought this NYTimes Art & Design piece about this to my attention.
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Eli and Edythe Broad donated most of the money ($24 million). $34 million was raised before the winning design was even chosen.
Won't it be interesting to see this sleek, floating aluminum and glass structure in a row with buildings like mine?I am VERY EXCITED to witness this arrival. It will change the face of our old North Campus, which I love as is. But I think when I walk by the new Broad museum, I will be startled by aesthetic pleasure every time.
Morrill Hall
