Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Tacoma Sights

HERE is the first sight of glass that we beheld when we left the freeway for the museum district of Tacoma. Overhead were these towering "stacks" of blue "rocks" made from glass, I assume.
We checked into our hotel first - to attend the travel writers conference the next day, and then we took off for the sights. I, of course, forgot my camera so was forced to take photos with my BlackBerry. I seem to be doing that a lot lately - forgetting my camera. Maybe I'm forcing myself to just be an observer and not a recorder.
I have seen Dale Chihuly's work before, but was as amazed this time as the first time I ever saw the wondrous glass work he and his crew produce. Amazing!
I may not have mentioned this, but I am not going to Italy this summer. It's a long story, but the Mister and I decided to try another trip when he is able to walk a little easier. He is having a problem with his foot and knees - so my sister and brother-in-law will go on without us and we will try another time. So this glass in Tacoma will have to substitute for the glass on the Isle of Murano - femminismo

Monday, June 21, 2010

This is the Day! The Longest Day!

Happy Summer! HERE for your delectation is the "April Poem Rolodex," each in its own little envelope - finally finished.
A compadre said they are each their own little work of art and I hope that is true. I have been astonished to pick poems at random - checking first to make sure I'll like them for more than just one reading - and then finding them in some way serendipitously relating to spring, or April, or a photograph or art object I chose to decorate their holder. These things never fail to astonish me.


The last poem is "Trying to Raise the Dead" by Dorianne Laux. I have two of her poems in these 30 teeny-tiny April books. Maybe one day I will make them ALL by her.
The stand was made by the Mister and is everything I could have hoped for. Using copper and wood, utilitarian materials, this completes the recycling efforts of dribs and drabs, scraps and pieces.
Now I cannot wait to begin the next one! However, perhaps I should write my own poems or stories. Not always fair to glean others' hard work when the whole project could be my own work.

On Friday, a friend and I leave to attend a Saturday travel writing workshop in Tacoma. Up I-5 north of us and alongside the Puget Sound. I can smell the docks now and I'll bet they can inspire a poem or two - femminismo
p.s. The big picture is for grl+dog, Deneese, who is - she says - "too lazy" to click on the pictures and make them bigger.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Fixing Mistakes . . .

TRIED TO "DESIGN" TODAY.
Yes, things look a good deal different here on this end. I accidentally changed the page and couldn't undo it. It was awful. So ugly - like a bad, bad sin you would never admit to - I spent a good two hours redesigning things. I'm still not happy with the transparent background since I think it makes things to hard to read. However I can't decide on a plain one-color background, so I guess I'm stuck with this for a while.
Please visit again tomorrow when I want to show you my finished coin packet books. The Mister made a super holder for the packets and I was overjoyed! Our first collaborative art project!!
- femminismo
p.s. Happy Fathers Day to my two sons!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Even If You Have Nothing to Blog About ...

HOW CAN WE NOT BLOG? (It's like, how can we not breathe?) How can we not have something to say or think? Even if it's meaningless to 95 percent of the people who may see it - or read it - there might be something provocative for someone else to read, see or know.
Yes, I know. I can hear you. We are able to do and say lots of things. That doesn't mean we have to pass them on - out loud or in print.
However, I have some beauties to show you. A co-worker brought some peonies into the office to share and there is no way I cannot share them with you.
My camera captured them for the eternity this blog lasts. And, also for this period of eternity, I've captured a poem by Dorianne Laux. I have wanted to find this poem for quite some time and now I know I can find it on another blog where someone else "steals" poems. This is from Laux's book "Facts About the Moon."

KISSING AGAIN
By Dorianne Laux from "Facts About the Moon"

Kissing again, after a long drought of
not kissing—too many kids, bills, windows

needing repair. Sex, yes, though squeezed in
between the minor depths of anger, despair—

standing up amid the laundry
or fumbling onto the strip of rug between

the coffee table and the couch. Quick, furtive,
like birds. A dance on the wing, but no time

for kissing, the luxuriant tonguing of another
spongy tongue, the deft flicking and feral sucking,

that prolonged lapping that makes a smooth stone
of the brain. To be lost in it, your body tumbled

in sea waves, no up or down, just salt
and the liquid swells set in motion

by the moon, by a tremor in Istanbul, the waft
of a moth wing before it plows into a halo of light.

Praise the deep lustrous kiss that lasts minutes,
blossoms into what feels like days, fields of tulips

glossy with dew, low purple clouds piling in
beneath the distant arch of a bridge. One

after another they storm your lips, each kiss
a caress, autonomous and alive, spilling

into each other, streams into creeks into rivers
that grunt and break upon the gorge. Let the tongue,

in its wisdom, release its stores, let the mouth,
tired of talking, relax into its shapes of give

and receive, its plush swelling, its slick
round reveling, its primal reminiscence

that knows only the one robust world.

Wow! That woman can write a poem about kissing, can't she? The first time I saw/read this poem was at a calligraphy art show. The calligrapher had taken a long, long strip of brown Kraft paper and inscribed this poem onto it. It was a great mixture of images. Imagine being that close, nose to paper, so near these luscious words describing the sensation of kissing.
Only something as sensuous as kissing could be mixed with these slippery, velvety peony petals - femminismo

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The Edgier Blogger

EDGIER? Yes, edgier! Fresca (l'astronave) was talking about how "unprivate" do we want our blogs to be. How much do we want to reveal? "How 'naked' do we want to be?"
How honest do we want to be?
What's in it for us, we wonder, to tell more than we feel comfortable with?
In writing, they call it "dangerous" writing. It's exploring who you are and what you really think and what you're really comfortable with.
And you're doing it in public! We shall see where the weeks take us - femminismo
"Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked; I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls." from Chapter I, Micah, The Old Testament

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

So This is 'Almost Summer' Weather?

TUESDAY was an awful weather day. The western sky was gray and foreboding while in the east the sun was shining. Talk about your evil twins!
The weather hit our building at work and you can see the hail bouncing around my car tires outside the building. This is five days before summer? People are going to start believing the gossip that it rains *all the time* in Oregon. AND hails!
Our building has very high ceilings - like 20 feet high - and there are skylights up above. When the hail hit it was so noisy you could hardly hear yourself think. I wonder what the birds thought.
I watched "The Lovely Bones" on Tuesday night. The Mister was spooked by the scene when Susie was crossing the cornfield and left to go take a shower. I have to admit I was spooked too. I loved the book, but I am not sure about the movie - even though I thought the actress who played "Susie" was wonderful. A terrible thing to lose a child in any way, and this particular movie at this particular time reflects a current theme in Oregon: a 7-year-old boy going missing from school. There has still been no word on Kyron Harmon who's been missing since June 4th. Real stories like this just make you feel sick with helplessness.
It's getting late and tomorrow is another day. I see a new dentist tomorrow and hope he is getting a good night's sleep tonight and feeling up to a 3:30 p.m. appointment tomorrow - femminismo
p.s. I'm getting very tempted to try the new "design" element available on Blogger. Don't be surprised if everything on this page changes one of these days.

Monday, June 14, 2010

June Events & Treats

This pretty girl, our granddaughter, Leesha, graduated from high school on Saturday. We are very proud of her for finishing her education despite some of the obstacles in her path.
Saturday was also the first day of sunshine around here in what seemed like a very, very, very long time. Some of the flowers had just given up trying to bloom and the foliage on many flowers and vegetables is very sketchy because of the slugs - who adore the moisture. Time to set out the slug bait.
On Saturday, after graduation, Leesha's parents had a barbecue to celebrate and it was a chance for my son and his dad to hand-crank ice cream. Old fashioned vanilla on top of the chocolate graduation cake. Yum!
The Mister and I attended the party and had a good meal to fortify us for more partying later on at a friend's house, where we danced and then the Mister played guitar. Fun times. The hostess had a beautiful bouquet of peonies with stalks of a mustard plant with variegated foliage. It was quite unusual and gave me a "plant itch" for something similar in our back yard.
This peony portrait is worked over a bit in Photoshop, but it was lovely on its own, too.
Here's the Mister at the barbecue before the party. While he played guitar at the party all I got was shots from behind. It was a "band in the basement" party and the music was quite loud for a while. They played until a little after 10 p.m. because most of the neighbors were at the party!
Here, below, is a picture of slim, tall Zoe, another granddaughter. She is growing so fast it's a wonder her skin can keep up with her.
And I'll finish up with a June rose that is so perfect and fat. Can you smell the peachy goodness of it? - femminismo

Friday, June 11, 2010

Five Hundred First Post . . . !!!

GOOD GRAVY! I almost didn't notice this piece of information when I logged in, but this is my 501st post on Blogger. Propitious moment to give you a picture of my Teeny Tiny Books. I suppose they might be even smaller, to be deserving of the title "Teeny Tiny," but they do fit into a coin envelope. You know: the kind you put loose change into when you make a deposit at the bank?
I have been a lousy blogger recently. Thinking a lot of what I'd like to write about, but never getting it down on paper. Or on the magical glass screen either!
The "Bound for Glory" picture is one I took in Salem from our conference headquarters. Overlooking a busy thoroughfare can be quite interesting!
I've been visiting other blogs the last two days - finally - and seeing these posts energizes me to get busy and do something. Anything to feel creative. So now that I have the April project finally almost done (I need to produce some sort of holder for these booklets) I can start on something new.
Something to do with paint and paper, I think. Now go create, people - femminismo

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Testing My Photoshop 'Skills'



As you can see, the real Photoshop geeks have nothing to fear. I used an image another blogger generously distributed and added a few other images. I'm nowhere near to painting faces and adding other elements that these ladies might be holding.

Hmm. Marie Antoinette as a zombie on Day of the Dead? I'm sure she wouldn't be holding a rose, but rather an arm or a leg to feast on - femminismo

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

First Day of June

JUNE - the month of graduates and newlyweds. And this year, apparently, gully washers of rain showers here in Oregon. A "pineapple express" is scheduled to come through tomorrow or the next day - or maybe tonight! I love pineapple, but I don't think we'll enjoy this one so much. The flowers are already looking pretty worn out from all the rain.
Not this clematis though. Sturdy flowers and such interesting centers I thought I would zoom in on this one.
We were up in the woods, too, on Sunday and I brought back a couple of photographs and a lot of red clay mud on my tennis shoes. Everything was very damp and my little path - Jeanne's Trail - down by the river had really grown over. Some of the deer ferns were as tall as me. Here I had it all cleaned up and spotless and now these little white flowers are carpeting the pathway. The goatsbeard* is in full bloom too, right by the side of the creek.
This is a sword fern, shot from overhead. All the "spears" look so fresh, clean and new! Gorgeous. Must go now. Bedtime and it's off for an annual conference tomorrow about an hour away from home. My suitcase is packed and with all the outfits I was stuffing in the suitcase the Mister was getting a little worried, asking how long I was going to be gone. Just three days, and not even that, really. I'll be back Friday evening - femminismo
* there is a photo of the goatsbeard on another "page" of this blog, if you search for it in the search field at the top