Dancing Crow

Chestnut Oak

via www.flickr.com

A leaf from the tree at the center of the drop-off circle at the middle school. I'm pretty sure it is a chestnut oak. I should find a leaf from a tree at the high school, marking the end of Aerin's era there, but there aren't any very distinctive trees in the way this one is.

There was an awards ceremony at the high school tonight - over 160 awards given to over 100 kids for everything from skill at sports to skill at music, or math, or intent to be in medicine, to "nice guy" awards. There was a vocal crowd of guys at the back, cheering on their friends. My hands are sore from clapping. Aerin won something to do with band, and something for caring about academics.

The camera remains unworking. I am grateful to have a back-up on my incredibly smart phone.

home, and memory

Three leaves from a copper beech tree outside the place my dad is being taken care of.

As we went north, we traveled backwards through spring. The leaves shrunk and shrivelled, and collapsed into buds, the blooms turned from aged and browning to tiny and brilliant in golds and greens and pinks. The beech tree was perfct for climbing. Alice had limited tolerance for sitting beside a bed, so she'd go out and climb and read, and come back and check on us.

I love the squiggly center line of the leaves at the top; that will straighten out as the leaves age and harden.

These are real leaves, held in place with silk organza and fusible web. I think part of the piece is about aging and change, as much as the leaf itself, and the circle. I'll keep this one pinned to the wall and watch it change.

still in Maine

Happy Cinco de Mayo!! I have to admit I always mistranslate that as five times the mayonaise. 

Alice and I are still in Maine. Today's circle is handstitched. The leaf image was copied onto fabric using the inkjet printer, then layered with dark green silk onto a white silk background. I brought the pieces with me to work on today, but finished it just now at the hotel. 

We got in several short visits with my dad, and explored around town as well, in between. Alice had two doses of ice cream, two playgrounds, one round of mini-golf (a first for both of us) and a hamburger. 

 

live from Maine

The May 3 circle is in honor of Sol Lewitt whose work we saw at MAss MoCA yesterday. I was chaperone for Alice's class. It was fun watching the kids encounter enormous weird art in the various MoCA galleries. The tour guides were good too. This circle resembles Lewitt's middle years, full of repeated lines and overlapping primary colors to give a little sublety. His later works are not subtle at all - just huge. 

This is the third tree in my backyard. Aerin and I planted it our second summer in the hosue, and she could jump over it when it was first in. The first winter the wild rabbits nibbled all the buds off it, and I didn't think it would make it. But it has thrived, and is much too big for Aerin to jump over now. We live in fertile territory!

I'm writing from Sanford, Maine, where my dad went from hospital into rehab. He's pretty miserable, but improving steadily. I've brought him a way to have music, and all the treasured CDs he was traveling with in his car, in hopes he might find it reassuring and soothing. 

what tree is it?

This amazing tree on the way to school has dark red and brown leaves, like a red Japanese Maple, but it has pink blossoms like a magnolia tree. It seemed a fitting end to April's blooming things.

My father is still in the hospital, doped to the gills on various pain meds. When he's comfortable, he's entertaining the staff with scraps of Gilbert and Sullivan. Which is an improvement over fainting from pain. Which is what landed him in the hospital this second time around. He'll be better soon, but this part is hard on everyone.

 

driving driving driving, and then not.

My circle for yesterday looks like this. Everyone is OK, but I had to make an emergency trip to Maine to fetch my father's car back here, because he is temporarily imobilized with a broken collar bone and ribs. So when they move on Tuesday, his car is here now, instead of there.

Today's circle is all about having been out for a ride and a walk and the amazing blue sky:

And then just for amusement value, I offer documentation of Aerin's experiments with her braces, specifically the one where she proves that they are magnetic:

 

Wright Flight, and a great deal of driving around

In the spirit of most important things first, and only telling the good stuff (my father-in-law's parenting rules; inspired or lackadaisical, they seem to work):

1. Alice flew a plane today. While she had to have two cushions so she could see over the dashboard, and her feet didn't reach the pedals, still, she sat in the left hand seat, and made the plane go, for take-off and for the trip over the Holyoke Range, over the Quabbin, and over her school. Landing was accomplished by the teacher. Gracefully.
2. Aerin got braces today. She was willing to do it on her own, but Al managed to combine visiting with her while her mouth was propped open with seeing Alice into her plane and off the ground, and greeting her on her (triumphant) return.
3. I finished putting together my portfolio and I am impressed with myself. 

Beyond the important things there was a lot of driving around with various subsets of children in the car. I'm pretty sure I circumnavigated town three or four times. 

Everyone is fine. Happy, not too severely pained in the teeth, and completely ready for bed. 

beach and tree

 

Yesterday's beach. Alice and I had the best time. We made footprints in varying hardnesses of sand, and tried to see if we could tell if we were walking backwards or forwards. We looked at longshore motion of sand, and did civil engineering on the tide running down the beach. We did a small faunal survey. We talked about the origin of the sand; up-stream or up-ice, or up-glacier from where we weere standing.

Today we visited Jenny, because she has commissioned a set of works for her bedroom. Alice and Jenny and I spent a happy half hour taping various sized and shaped pieces of newspaper to the wall to decide on the final dimensions. We eventually settled on the perfect configuration, which looked nothing like what we'd started with. Which is good - not letting pre-conceived notions interfere.

Today on the way home, I saw several of the trees, blooming with the most absurd pinky purple color. This one had a pile of dandelions around the base.

pi(e) day

Pi(e) day = March 14 = 3/14 = 3.14 = ratio between the diameter and the circumference of any circle.

Pie tally:

• raspberry (with 18 candles for Aerin)
• chocolate cream (with 24 candles for Abby)
• 2 apple
• blueberry (shown above)
• three berry
• key lime
• another chocolate pudding

people tally (some people belong to more than one group):

• 4 of us
• 3 Vertssess
• 3 Almanzars
• 2 Abbys
• 1 neighbor
• 1 hiking club
• 2 co-workers
• 1 co-worker girlfriend
• 3 Mt Holyoke students with various graduation dates

plus some I can't remember.

Pi day makes every one happy. It is like Thanksgiving, only with just dessert.

Black and white circles will resume tomorrow.

distracted and bemused

I must admit to feeling like Edward Lear's old man with a beard, because it is just as I feared - while I have no birds in my beard I am watching the snow melt under the (lovely lovely warm) weather and the strong contrasts are vanishing and flowing downstream.

The lower right is Friday, when Alice and I went to see the high school musical Grease, and came home too late to post anything. It shows the small patches of snow left in the shade of the pine woods.

The lower left is a pair of socks, finished Saturday and included because the palette is similar.

Saturday had no post because Alice and I got up waaay too early and drove to Cambridge with friends so she could go to a bunch of interesting and distinctly offbeat classes with other extraordinay middle and high schoolers. She took classes in Greek and Roman mythology, Maxwell's equations for middle schoolers, introduction to soldering and explosions in chemistry. By the time we were done and home, it was well after everyone's bedtime. I did finish the socks, and a circle. The circle is the one top right - it looks different because MIT has no sewing machines, so I used some black and gray markers to sketch in what I was thinking about.

The last one is from today, another reflecting tree, with the snows of yesterday upon it. The snows of yesterday are melting like crazy, and I'm going to have to work from memory or modify my point of view.