Windy Weekend

All weekend long
high winds
blowing, making
the trees sway
and the leaves
blow every which
way.

Wedding Day in Abaco

I tired to post the satellite weather map for the islands and it didn't work so here's a cloud. They have a few clouds down there today and lots of raindrops. I'm sure it won't dampen the spirits at the wedding party.

Hockey Update

All's well with the world tonight. R played some of the best hockey I've ever seen tonight. It's a beautiful sport to watch when played well, such speed, grace and agility. Nice when there are moments when it all comes together. O played great too, just now back on the ice his knee almost as good as new.

Archimedes and Floating Bodies

Early Frost

The landscape's not quite this gray yet but I noticed frost in the fields early this morning. Here's a poem that Kevin sent a few years ago that's perfect for this season.

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost, A Boy's Will, 1915

Noooooo

Lots of denial about the leaves changing color and falling off the trees...not dealing with it well, at all...the getting dark earlier...brrrr..

Remembering Conor

Happy Birthday Conor.Thanks for reminding us all that love and kindness matter most in this life. www.mcnallyconor.blogspot.com..."a handful of earth cries aloud i used to be hair or i used to be bones and just the moment when you are all confused leaps forth a voice, hold me close i'm love and i'm always yours. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,there is a field, I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense."
Rumi

Christopher

Chris is
playing tonight out
in New Hope with
Dirt Road 14.
Can't wait to
see him play live.
It's been awhile.

Gala

Had way too much fun on a school night attending this event with
friends from work.

Salon Event

Attended a salon event at
the home of David Gonzales and
Lisa Sokolov. Artists opening up
their home to host an evening of
music and poetry. Incredible to
hear great music in such an
intimate and relaxed setting.
Daniel Kelly improvised on piano
and later accompanied a cuban poet.

Two Wedding Weekend

Two wedding celebrations this past weekend. One at the Metropolitan Club and the other at a small church in Locust Valley...both built by JP Morgan. Opulence, that word comes to mind.

Speaking at a Conference Today

Is there anything
better than an
an audience of
teachers ?
I think not.
Even so, it
always feels
like I'm diving
into the deep
end of the pool
when I have to
make a presentation.

Escher and Pencils

Very, very busy day at work. Lots of drawing in the margins of the contracts today. I am enjoying using pencils and I don't mind when people talk and talk on the phone because it gives me more time to draw in between saying...mmhmmm...mhmmm...mhmmm.

Art in Public Places

"Pasqualina Azzarello an artist from the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, likes to distribute her work through unorthodox channels; she once painted 500 rocks she had gathered from the waterfront, then took nighttime walks around the neighborhood to leave them where people would discover them in the morning.
One night in March, she set out for the corner of Front and Jay Streets, where a 32-story residential tower is going up, on a similar mission. She took paintings of flowers that she had made on pieces of wood, propped the pictures up against the construction fence and slipped away, hoping they would be carried off to happy homes.
The people who found Ms. Azzarello's paintings early the next morning happened to be the site construction workers, and they did not snatch the artwork away as she had expected. Instead, they screwed the pictures to the site's blue plywood fence, just down from the building permits."
from an article in the NY Times in August, 2006

One of the Poets

Here is an excerpt from one
of Brian Turner's poems. He read his work on Saturday
at the Poetry Festival ( a poem in which he remembered
someone his commanding officer decided should not be
remembered ) and I met him later that night in the rain
waiting on line for coffee, we shared an umbrella and
talked for about our fathers. I am hoping he won't sue
me for posting some of his work here.

...she sees the shadows of people working
to save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
and she cannot hear them any longer,
and when she closes her eyes
the most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
tangerine washing into Russian blue,
with the droning engine humming on
in a dragonfly’s wings, the island palms
painting the sky an impossible hue
with their thick brushes dripping in green…
But this is all an act of the imagination,
a means of dealing with the obscenity
of war, what loss there is, the inconsolable
grief, the fact that Thalia Fields is gone,
long gone, about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, 10,000 feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,

Ravel

Listening to le tombeau de couperin.