FAMOUS
Today's PhotoFriday challenge is "Famous" and I don't know when I have ever had such trouble with a theme before. I racked my brain and searched my i-photo archives, but had a very difficult time coming up with anything. Fame is just not something I think much about, at least when I am thinking in photographs. Then I remembered taking this shot of my friend Eliza last time we went to the Met, a few months ago. The big banner with the marble pillars soaring above seem to fit the bill. Plus, something about the two of us, relatively unknown little painters, traveling in from the boondocks (well, Philadelphia isn't the boondocks really...) to worship at the Big Important Temple of Art (which is how I think of The Met.) Kind of funny, in a humbling kind of way!

(I actually felt relatively famous today because Ned Batchelder just used a photo of mine, "Big Hug", on his blog. Click here to see it. Ned is an old college friend, a computer guru, and also the parent of a child with autism.)

SPRING PLEASURES
always put me in mind of this poem by e.e.cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

MYSTERIOUS LIGHT
P has violin lessons with a really wonderful instructor. She will play a passage for him so that he can hear what she is talking about: so intelligent. And yet I think this is his first teacher to do that with any regularity. Yesterday, when I dropped him off it was still light. But when I came to pick him up an hour later it had gotten dark. Both of them were so absorbed in the music that they didn't even hear me let myself in, let alone think to turn on any more lights. There was a beautiful, mysterious feel to the moment.

CRACKPOT
This aloe vera just kept getting bigger and bigger. Unfortunately, it was living in the house of Woman-who-never-repots-her-plants (that is my name in Houseplant.) I did lean it up against things, and attempted to keep it in balance by tying it to a stick. Not good enough. I don't think it was really trying to commit suicide but it must have added one millimeter too much of new growth, upsetting its precarious balanced state and....CRASH! Unfortunately, it is now taking its chances out on my compost heap.

BIG HUG
Henry gets some reassurance from Paul on a recent hike at Hawk Mountain. Henry was all big happy smiles on the way up to the North Lookout, but on the way down he became anxious for some unknown reason. He needed a lot of hugs to help him get down the mountain.

BLUE SKIES
One week ago we had brilliant blue skies and emerging blossoms. This morning, the skies are rainy and the blossoms are mostly carpeting the ground. Spring goeth all in white...and green...and gray...and brown...

YOUNG CONNOISSEUR
There was an informal luncheon meeting and gallery talk at the Manayunk Art Center yesterday, where my exhibit "Only Human 2" is showing. I didn't know most of the people who came to hear me ramble on about my paintings, but a good friend came with her two children. Sweet little R seemed as happy as a clam. Fresh strawberries to eat and interesting things to look at: life is good!

BODY OF WATER
Well, OK, technically, it's clay. But it is a model of ancient Sumerian irrigation technique that P did for a 6th grade social studies project. It is a beautiful objet d'art, on its own. The school even kept it for a while on display in the Library. An acquantance who came to the house, and knew vaguely that I was an artist actually gasped in admiration when she saw it and asked it was one of my pieces! My heart swelled with maternal pride. Just like the levels in the Sumerian water ditches (or whatever they were called.)

GOLDEN FLOWERS
No idea what they are. From my neighbor Hiroshi's "arboretum", and he didn't remember the name of them either. Lovely though. Aaah spring! I could never understand when the poet T.S. Eliot went on about "April is the cruelest month..." To paraphrase him crudely, all that burgeoning life, sunshine and flowers just depressed the heck out of him. Obviously the poor fellow would have benefited greatly from the new SSRI drugs, although the world of poetry would probably have lost a unique (if depressed) voice. Anyway, to me, spring is a very welcome refreshment of spirit. And a great season for taking yet more photographs!

KINETIC and STATIC
A cold but sunny spring day at the playground. Note that Henry is still wearing long pants and a turtleneck, while H has already transitioned to warm weather clothing, shorts and a tee shirt despite the still-nippy air. It's a season of fashion confusion!