SUNDAY

September 13th 2020 and overcast day and cool. Exhausted by the real world conivances and consequences.

I walked out, Northward on 2nd Avenue to 30th Street, then Westward thinking I might shop at Trader Joe. The line was formidable so I just kept going West to Park Avenue and then South to 22nd Street where another market was uncluttered and had all I needed, then slowly back to 21st Street and up three flights to perform the cleaning of shoes, mask and gloves and all the new purchases before putting them away. Then Supper. That one shot of the house with the great wisteria where I paused and imagined living there high up. Birds were twittering their evening messages within it's bounty and the air spoke to me of fast approaching Fall.

My friend Grace Forest is safe enough for now. Evacuated with all her critters to a place near Paradise then to her doughters at Oroville. I am doing a rain dance for them, for the great trees, the wildlife and for all the exhausted fire fighters. Goodnight

ORVILLE CALIFORNIA FIRE EVACUATION

(screen shot)

Our friend Grace of Windthread was evacuated and her blog post is down till she returns. You can news of the fire at

https://fox40.com/2019/09/07/crews-battling-300-acre-wildfire-east-of-oroville-in-butte-county-evacuations-ordered/

and check in at her blog

https://windthread.typepad.com/windthread/

~*~

UPDATE
10 p.m. NYC
GRACE IS HOME

SPRINGING AHEAD

SATURDAY
Beauty at the Natural Green Market

At Home

Supper and another episode
Season 9

"DOC MARTIN"
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2018-03-08/doc-martin-will-end-after-two-more-series-martin-clunes-reveals/

~*~ SUNDAY
At 28 minutes after Midnight
I reset the Clock

"My answers are inadequate
To those demanding day and date
And ever set a tiny shock
Through strangers asking what's o'clock;
Whose days are spent in whittling rhyme-
What's time to her, or she to Time?"

-Dorothy Parker-

Making Plans for a Museum Visit
GRANT WOOD
(screen shot self portrait)

(from 'Bob and Sophies French Adventure')
"American Gothic, the picture of a stern old farming couple standing in front of their barn, has been seen by everyone.The painter exhibited the canvas in Chicago at the age of 39. At the age of 50 he was dead from pancreatic cancer. In his brief career he produced some memorable works and a few masterpieces. This 1935 canvas is called Death on the Ridge Road. The composition a sure sign that some human genius burns so brightly it simply can't last long. In this picture the encroaching darkness, the almost toy town joyfulness of the truck and the interplay of rain with the cross like telegraph poles are gloriously sombre. True American Gothic."
(screen shot)

  "He is thought by some to be America's greatest Arts and Crafts school painter. There is an exhibition at the Whitney in NY that runs 'til June. Here's the website with more of the works in the exhibition."
https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/GrantWood
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Wood
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Whitney Museum of American Art 
FREE 
Fridays 7-9:30 pm

Constitutional Before Sleep
Around Gramercy Park
Many famous folks lived here and more recently, Jimmy Fallon who first bought two apartments for his Mother and himself. His mother died last November. He has since purchased three more units.

34 Gramercy Park
(look inside)
https://ny.curbed.com/2014/9/5/10050662/jimmy-fallon-now-owns-five-units-in-his-gramercy-building

side

 Entrance

***
then
LOUD CLANGING
Con Edison Sets Up For?
Third Avenue between 20/21st Streets

~*~

MONDAY
Short trip to the post office and a view of the Chrysler Building.

Nothing serious, simply ordinary chronic conditions acting up, so I am 'under the weather' before our third storm lands tonight and taking a day of rest and recuperation missing my weekly writing group.
In the mail today
 A Package I sent to Grace Forest was returned
Unclaimed!

for Grace update see
http://mscomfortzone.blogspot.com/2018/03/grace-and-mail-difficulty.html 
~*~


TUESDAY
Still laying low at home. The snow has not made much impact on my neighborhood but some icy conditions and wind are present with more snow possible. The news is depressing at best. New England is snowed in and I'm returning to the memory of a  storm years ago and the dear friends of my heart there.

~*~

GRACE and MAIL DIFFICULTY

This big package I sent out quite a while ago was returned to me. Funny that I'd just mailed another letter with seeds in the afternoon and only found the package in my mailbox when I returned home.

Why?

"UNCLAIMED"

A series of emails back and forth and I understand now that she only goes to the post office when she needs something in town, not regularly. I didn't even remember what was inside so I opened it.

A leaf letter, and I can't even read my sloppy scrawl, but lovely Goat Milk soap, and a very useful guide to Homeopathic remedies.

Nice doodle on the back

I phoned her but only got a busy signal like the phone was off. So then, bless her heart, she phoned me and we had a few minutes of voice to voice. It's still rough and very demanding and she still has no doubts it's exactly where she belongs. Very reassuring.

So, since there's no way to predict when she will be in town, and we don't know how long they hold packages for before returning them, I won't be sending this package again 'till I hear from her.

All's Well

REVISITING INSPIRATION

(First published in May of 2016, this touching 'Mother' story returns to warm my heart once more)

The Thread Stone

Mother Metaphor

On Mothers day, a girl who reads our blogs wrote to Wendy Golden Levitt about what we mean to her.  It was a very fond, wonderful and tender letter about her life and feelings, and made me weep.  In one part, she told about collecting Mothers:

"i will collect many mothers. michelle, grace and you are my second and third and fourth mothers. i love this a lot. collecting mothers. i arrange what each of you mothers got in a soft bag  where i keep my special things. i put a flat rock from the lake with a different coloured thread around it. and i write down black for my real mother, orange is grace. yellow is michelle. blue is wendy. like that."

Inspired, I made this stone--giving Wendy three different blues because she shared the story, and I kept the birth mother black at the center, then yellow for me and orange for Grace Forest.  I saw as I was wrapping the thread that some strands had drifted, which gave me the idea of braiding them all together!

Now We Are One

~*~

May we be happy.

May we be free from suffering.

May our hearts be easy no matter what comes to us in life.

~*~

BIRTHDAY GIFTS

 From my dearest, dear Florida friend:

Loving thoughts and a loving gift enclosed!
Merci Mon Ami

~*~

"August"
This cloth lived here for awhile on loan a year or so ago,
Then went back to it's maker, Grace Forest in New Mexico.
Today it was returned to me as a gift with this note:

Yay!
~*~

 One Perfect Sumo Orange
A great delicacy from my lovely long time neighbors:
"Sumo is a name that fits this new orange because of its size and its distinctive topknot, like a sumo wrestler. A cross between the mandarin and a California navel orange, it took 30 years to develop in Japan, where it is called Dekopon and highly prized."

Thank You
~*~

Tonight

I'll sit Zazen for Gratitude

LAST BITS and BITES

Two More Holiday Greetings

(Liz and Jessie-friend from my writing group and The Barons-friends since High school)

Holiday Corpses

NYC
(Saw the first one on Christmas eve.  More daily since)
Wreathed Stone Lion
NYC
(New York Public Library Main Branch)

Sculpture at Madison Square
NYC
(Polished steel and glass, it immediately became an elaborate 'selfie' location)

Three Boys and a Boom Box
NYC
(Street Dancing across Fourteenth Street)

Flag by Grace Forest
New Mexico
(I re-shot the xerox she sent of a photo she took in her yard)

"The Sheltering Sky"
by Bernardo Bertolucci
(from the novel by Paul Bowles)
"We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

.

https://youtu.be/XgfnZZlgt6Q

See You Next Year

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