November Days

     Now the thankful week arrives, when we acknowledge how much we have to be grateful for every week. Including this year – disaster averted on Election Day – thank you specially to Generation Z!

On my gratitude list will be opportunities for work I’ve so enjoyed, seizing gift thoughts that float through. In one endeavor, I entertained myself greatly by making postcards for the most recent beginning-reader in the family. Utter nonsense that was so much fun to do. So I subject you to a few of the images and, forgive me, the doggerel. I send these along with Thanksgiving wishes all around!

Mid-Winter Days

     Last week I went to Seattle with my old friend who lives here (my longstanding friend of shared adventures). We decided on a whim the day before to travel (remember such thoughts?), to ride the ferry, be in the city and, after ongoing gray, make use of promised sunshine.

     In a word, Seattle was grim. On our visit in December, holiday festivities buffered reality with a little glitter and cheer. This week all seemed grubby and crazy and more than a little sad. Hammering Man still pounds, and walking past I wondered if anybody considers putting a mask on him, thinking it would probably tangle with his hammer. But gazing up at him takes eyes away from the street scene – more shelters in doorways, blue tarps, tents, boarded up shops. No scurrying office workers clutching coffee cups.

     Beyond curiosity and the desire to walk someplace else, our only target was The Crumpet Shop (hoping to recreate our holiday visit, eat some, take some home). But no, “closed due to COVID and winter business constriction.” We absorbed this sign, and kept walking.

Still bustling at Christmas, now the market was deserted, all the long row of stalls empty. People milled along the street through the market, small clusters formed in front of a few vegetable stands, the original Starbucks, noodle shops, and Le Panier. Corrugated iron shades shuttered the bakery I look for (because it has enormous vegan chocolate chip cookies that can be an indulgent meal in a pinch).

A mid-week, winter day surely explains the empty market (it must still bustle on the weekend, even on this recent snowy Valentine’s Sunday), but I’d hoped for a glimpse of the flower stands loaded with spring blossom, tall, galvanized buckets full of tulip and daffodil color.

We circled more blocks, then searched for a Mexican place my friend once mentioned as providing a memorable evening meal – a tiny taqueria on First Avenue. Beans and rice just when you need them – and guacamole and freshly made tortillas – at a metal table tucked just off the sidewalk. Suddenly we were doing the unheard of – eating at a restaurant, albeit outdoors. We talked about cities, about living in a city in a pandemic – how so many places no longer exist as we picture them in our memories.

We were glad we went. And glad to be home.

It’s mid-term in the U.K., so class took a break last week. In our break assignment, we painted random watercolor shapes, and then changed them into people by adding features and clothing using gouache – taking advantage of its opaqueness and layering ability.

The ladies below appeared out of the watercolor blobs, wearing their winter coats, and standing in a meadow of flowers. Maybe they are out of the city for the day.

 

The Screen Life

Since the middle of January, I’ve been attending a weekly class presented by the House of Illustration in London. “Illustrating People,” is taught by the Welsh illustrator, Siôn Aptos. The sessions begin at 6:30 p.m. London time (10:30 a.m. for me). It will run for 10 weeks, and I love this class.

On Thursday mornings, I join 15 other students on Zoom for two hours of presentation – learning about drawing from reference and life, and the myriad ways to illustrate people. My classmates sign in from all over, a woman from Estonia, another Yank, Brits with senses of humor from around the UK. I often wish I could visit with them afterwards – the way you do in a real class – my tribe, people whose eyes don’t glaze over when talk turns to tricks for getting the length of a nose right.

We started with facial features on amorphous watercolor shapes, an approach meant to help break down the intimidation it’s easy to feel about the oh, so familiar human face. Encouraged to simplify and exaggerate to create a character, I struggle, getting lost, as I tend to do, in the reality weeds. We draw “in class,” and have assignments to complete and post to our shared Padlet (an online classroom corkboard). On good days I get involved and obsessed and keep at it – the best of learning.

Other days I fizzle – but can be cheered by yet more screen time and an exchange with the important people in Alaska or California or both together. We’ve discovered a couple of book series that appeal to all of them (except Sweet Brother – he’s not ready for FaceTime book club). We read about Kitty, a girl with cat-like superpowers, or Zoey (and her cat Sassafras) who can speak to and help animals by using basic methods of science, or little Darek who finds a “dragonling,” and comes to promote peaceful life between dragons and townspeople. My audience is patient with technological missteps, “upside down Granny Katy.” Sometimes they draw or do Legos, but often just listen and always follow the plot.

The video calls, like the illustration class, leave me feeling I’ve been with them, but not quite. FaceTime dinners with friends are like that, too. You get takeout and it’s all simple, and still fun, but I’d be so glad to see them and their cozy houses. My screen experiences are just a shadow of what faces those who work from home or attend school virtually – upsides and down.

It’s a privilege to have these alternate methods of being with people. I know that. And here we are – almost a year of pandemic – but we keep Zooming and carry on!

Postcards – Flowers and Vote Blue

I’ve been writing postcards this week – the last summer flowers to Sweet B – and postcards (with a whale image and “One vote can make a whale of a difference!” on the front) to likely voters identified by groups who have worked since the last election to flip the U.S. Senate and influence state politics.

A while back I expressed skepticism about the value of such cards – but I was wrong, and it seems a great idea to be doing something. My old friend, who lives here, has been penning postcards for the local Indivisible group for some time, and she told me how to participate.

The writing reminds me of being disciplined in school in the old school days, made to write 25 times on the blackboard: “I will not talk to my neighbor during class.” (That particular means of discipline is probably long gone, along with the blackboard – not a Zoom problem.)

During a first winter storm the last few days, I walked to pick up more postcards with rain dripping off my hood, stepping on fallen chestnuts, giant maple leaves, and around puddles. October always transitions us toward winter, but this year worries about a predicted COVID-19 surge and Election Day chaos amplify the seasonal dread of darkness and cold.

Fall is here. Winter is coming. The first debate is tonight. It’s all upon us. But it could turn out OK – let’s keep that thought!

Sheltering with the Alaskans

Lady B made the drawing below of her situation (that’s Baby Brother playing with trucks nearby). But I’m a little doubtful that her speech bubble contains a meaningful comment, because we hear tales and see photos and videos of a giant pile of snow in the back yard for snow caves, and of great cross-country skiing.

Lady B is learning to skate ski, but on the downhills, she gets her skis in the tracks, tucks, and hurtles around bends. Baby Brother rides in a trailer behind his dad (a handle on the back allows Lady B to also catch a ride). Luckily, good weather and plentiful snow fill these quarantine days!

She sees her class on Zoom – she tells us they each log in with something to share and the big screen fills with the classmate talking, the others appear in little boxes at the bottom. We are all pixels now.

But there must be moments like below.

My Best Portrait Ever

In the midst of a week when governments fiddled while the Amazon burned, and continual bad and crazy presidential behavior bludgeoned us, I received a welcome letter from Sweet Baby in the mail. It contained a penline and crayon portrait of me (she says) with long curly hair, a rainbow-skirted dress (with a tiny bow), an apple in a green tree, and a heart for love. Spirits rose!

Alaska And A Name Change?

For four days in May, while Mrs. Hughes celebrated her birthday with her sister and her best friend in New York City, we flew north to help Mr. Carson hold down the fort. (He doesn’t really need much help.) Chill from the north wind dampened the days of our visit, but didn’t dampen Alaska spring activities.

Pretty much nothing is cuter than a six-year old girl with braids and a ball cap playing her first baseball game (after just two practices). Standing by the dugout full of tiny teammates, I watched the swing and heard the satisfying smack when bat connected with ball pitched by her coach. Braids flying, she headed to first base, a little uncertainly at first, and then swiftly!

One day Lady B’s kindergarten teacher planned an excursion to the Municipal Greenhouse and nearby woods, and asked me to lead a little watercolor demonstration. She provided good materials (that can make all the difference with watercolor) – tiny palettes with six real watercolors, fine line pens and brushes with points. The students didn’t need much direction, and soon scattered around the greenhouse to draw – watercolor paper taped to clipboards – then came together in a circle to paint. The penline and watercolors produced amazed me by their careful observation of shape and color, each unique to its creator.

It struck me that the days of Lady Baby are behind us. That little girl in the orange t-shirt, worn over a red, long-sleeved thermal shirt with Tyrannosaurus rex on the front, seems far from anything with baby in the title. The girl formerly known as Lady Baby has school life and social relationships of her own now – two best friends, a girl with a mop of blonde curly hair, and a boy with dark curly hair and big glasses. Maybe now I call her Lady B, a more grown up title, because Baby Brother (who rapidly outgrows that moniker) calls her Bopal.

We spent great days with Baby Brother while Lady B was at school. Playgrounds please, but nothing is as popular as “owside” – the back yard with swing and slide and balls to kick – or a slow amble down the sidewalk out front.

He loves books – specially ones with pictures of “boom boom crash” providers, particularly enormous bulldozers and crane trucks. Lady B reads to him, revisiting all the favorites (dinosaurs). He laughs with the same joy and relief at the resolution in “Knufflebunny” that I remember from her.

When we first arrived I marveled at his mom’s understanding of his language, but as the days passed I began to get it better. He repeats everything said to him – so the structure and intonation becomes more clear, and you realize how much he can communicate, if only his listener understands. He says all the family names, but somewhat curiously, Lord Cromwell became “Bacram.”

It sounds odd to say of someone so young (he’ll be two in early September), but he seems contemplative as he thoughtfully considers things. I say: “Look, chickadees – chick-a-dee-dee-de.” And he listens and looks, head tilted to one side, before repeating the call. It’s easy to be totally silly with him and make up nonsense, eliciting great grins and chuckles.

I loved watching Lady B and Baby Brother greet their mother when she came back. Both brave while she was away – and overjoyed at her return!

*Image used by permission of the artist

A New Header And An Old Friend

Finally “Her spirits rose…” has a new header – the banner at the top – one of several variations I made thanks to my friend who paints in the woods, Andie Thrams.

Last summer Andie, (www.andiethrams.com), came to stay in the Buffalo for a lovely long time. We have known each other since the night 20 years ago we met as strangers in the Anchorage airport for a midnight flight back East. We’d been linked by a mutual friend, who thought we would get along (being flower painters), and an invitation to attend a retreat for people “who keep field journals in their work.”

We share a love of watercolor – and the making of handmade books. Andie introduced me to Vamp and Tramp, those traveling purveyors of artists’ books who represent her ongoing series, “In Forests,” beautiful accordion-fold hand bound books, illuminated by paintings and words. Most of these now reside in collections of libraries and universities around the country.

Andie paints the pages of her books while seated on a little pad on the forest floor. She hikes or kayaks into wild places, carrying her art supplies in a backpack – brushes, watercolors, long sheets of paper, and easel – and immerses herself to paint. The press of development, the wildfires and bark beetle of climate change threaten her studio spaces, making observing and recording these woodland parts of the natural world ever more urgent.

Giant firs, cedars, sequoias, coastal redwoods (she has a long list of beloved trees) and their understory of berries, ferns, and fungi can be overwhelming to paint. But Andie captures the changing greens of season, the glowing light through forest canopy, and enough individual form to make species recognizable. Most days here, she headed into our nearby woods – or ranged further and longer to the old growth of the Hoh Rainforest.

Toward the end of her stay, before she went to kayak with her husband on the fjords of Vancouver Island for two weeks, we sat at my computer, and she attempted to bring my meager Photoshop skills up a level. She tried not to lecture me about my faulty filing system – I can be slapdash about organizing; she is orderly and patient.

But I’ve kept it up, “lassoing” images and making future headers (including the one below in Andie’s honor – wildflowers I drew in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains).

Thanks, Andie, for computer tutorial, visit, and long friendship!

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Armchair Series – Outdoor

Today I will be sitting in a fine armchair like this to watch the Bainbridge Island Fourth of July parade. The current administration and its congressional minions seem intent on providing a new list of “freedoms” to celebrate: to be sick without the burden of insurance, to enjoy dirty air and water unencumbered by environmental regulation, to deny logic and science, to practice intolerance. The list goes on. But it isn’t who we are or what we celebrate!

Armchair Series – Ireland

On this June morning, the window to my workroom stands open – sun shining, birds singing, weeds growing – the outdoors beckons. When the days of rain return, I will write about our big family adventure in May and early June. Meanwhile – two worn-velvet armchairs – purply-pink from a bedroom and blue from the sitting room of the Ferndale Guesthouse in Enniskerry, Ireland. We spent the night there before setting out to walk along the The Wicklow Way.

Armchair Series – Writers

It’s a relief to wander the Internet in search of armchairs instead of news. An article  about Hillary Mantel’s writing room (with armchair pictured) appeared in The Guardian back in 2007, when she was “building her new novel about Thomas Cromwell.” Mantel says she writes “…in the main room of our flat, at the top of a former Victorian asylum in Surrey.” “If I feel travel would broaden the mind I take my laptop up a spiral staircase to a little room under the asylum clock.”

And the Wordsmith pointed out this recent interview with Penelope Lively who has a new book, “The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.” She has an interesting thing to say about birthdays as we age. I love her novels and her memoir, “Dancing Fish and Ammonites,” which she described as a “view from old age.” She’s just finished a non-fiction book about gardening (I’m eager for that) – and she thinks about a new novel. “A writer writes,” Lively says – lucky for us.

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Flowers From The Garden – Hellebore

Hellebore – the Lenten rose, Christmas rose – even braver than snowdrops, hellebore bloom here in January, bowing their blossoms for protection from inclement weather. My plants are 10 years old now, big leathery leaves get cut back each fall, so the blossoms appear as a surprise in the depth of winter. I read a long time ago, that helleboe lift their heads and endure indoors if you carefully slit the stem vertically in several spots.

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Valentine Flowers

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A Settle

The bizarre and cruel turn of events this weekend make this week’s intended image poignant. My mother’s parents came here from Ireland, and I always read “The Irish Home” wondering about the homes they left and what they hoped for. We are all immigrants.

 

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The Teacup Project III

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