the quiet art of cemetary statues

I have been noticing the beauty of cemetary statues more now since my brother died...I 'get it' now-the depth of their concrete metaphor of irreplacable loss-some of them capture that extremely well...

statue in Liverpool, England

I thought this was simply beautiful- a tribute to the Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby....

shadow photography of the 30's and 40's

I really love the gorgeous style of shadow photography various artists used in the 30's and 40's in publicity photos. Recently my sister's best friend, Carole, gave me a couple of beautiful photos of The Graysons, (one of whom was her great aunt Carole, who died in April),- she and her husband were acrobatic performers in the 1940s in Baltimore primarily but did perform in USO shows and in NYC. When I get a scanner I will put them up here, but for now, here is an example of this style of photography featuring one of my favorite trumpet players, Bunny Berigan from a 1937 shot.....

the sun today......

This is something my brother Bruce would have loved-how the sun looked today. I can remember him waking me up in the middle of the night, when I was a teenager, all excited, wanting me to look at something through his telescope....

Sunspot

Here is a shot of Blessing enjoying the afternoon sunspot on the floor in the kitchen yesterday......

The resonate trumpet

When I play the trumpet, it is the closet I have felt to a spiritual presence. I taught myself 7 years ago to play the trumpet and it always feels that way-like a kind of direct line to source. I have never been interested in bravado trumpet-those ego high notes and sounding loud and aggressive-the trumpet for me is this beautiful rich resonate instrument, more of an introspective sound...

Clifford Brown

my favorite picture of the great trumpet player and composer
Clifford Brown....

Dry by Augusten Burroughs

I am presently reading "Dry" by Augusten Burroughs ( of Running With Scissors fame) about his journey through alcoholism....I am reading a lot of books about addiction lately as I am preparing to study to become an Addictions Counselor. I like this book a lot as it is a horrifying look at what people can do to themselves and not even notice and when they can see, to redeem themselves. I admire people who can face down their demons because it is so hard to do and most people don't. Of course a major part of quitting your addiction is healing the relationships you have destroyed and I love this quote from the book about how refreshing it is to be authentic with someone-challenged by someone-what Stephen Sondheim called 'Being Alive'-not easy either....

"The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly about even the smallest thing...all his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. and we both realize what a rare thing this is."

Karen Carpenter on drums

Here is one of my favorite shots of Karen Carpenter on the drums.....

Blessing at 1 year old (aka I feel pretty)

Right now, Blessing's big thrill is looking at herself in the mirror. She has been doing this now, off and on , for a few days. When she was a kitten, she would get the fluffy, puffy tail of fear when she saw her reflection, thinking, i guess it was another cat....now she sits at the mirror sometimes and just gazes at herself quietly. i tried to get a photo of this but she kept hiding behind the mirror instead....

Nellie Lutcher, jazz pianist dies

jazz pianist Nellie Lutcher had to be talked into singing but she had one of those voices you just want to hear because her way of pronouncing and articulating words is just so interesting to listen to. She wrote her biggest hit "Come on Down" among others. She once said "life is beautiful and life is so short.." I particularly like her song, "My Mother's Eyes"....

rollerblading in the rain

Today after work, I thought I would rollerblade a little before heading home and I got caught in the rain about midway on the Manhan Trail......it is a powerful experience to be out in nature anyway but being stuck in the rain with no cover is invigorating. It is also a clue to what life is about-the beauty in the unexpected.

The Sociopath Next Door/ Cindy Sheehan and conscience

This is one of the more interesting books I have read in a while....it is more about who ISN'T a sociopath but that in itself is no relief because as Martha Stout, it's author, observes, most people are passively going along with whoever is in charge. here is my favorite quote from the book so far.....
"(in every 100 people) four are sociopathic-they have no conscience. Of the remaining 96 decent citizens, all of who do have consciences, 62 percent will obey authority more or less without question, quite possibly the authority of one of the more aggressive and controlling sociopaths in the crowd. This leaves 36 people who have both conscience and the strength to bear the burdens of their actions, a little more than a third of the group. These are not impossible odds, but they are not easy ones either."
My brother's death kept me from really being able to respond clearly about Cindy Sheehan's decision to take a break and rest from her 3 years of tirelessly fighting to help end the occupation of Iraq... she is clearly one of the 36 percent, Stout identifies here- a person of extraordinary integrity. I believe most Americans are extremely passive to authority , even those who claim to be polically progressive. Few people really make sacrifices and do what their deepest convictions tell them. I got to see Cindy in March and saw her sit quietly waiting to speak while a bunch of 'professional protesters' or the 'hey hey ho ho s" as my friend Laura from NYC calls them, got up to rant and get lots of attention and drive home in their gas guzzling SUVs sipping $6.00 cups of coffee. I wondered if she was sick of that- and now it is clear she was and is. Most American are status conscious and shallow, not bad people, but shallow. They will take the easy way out and watch the war go on .. and Cindy Sheehan made the best decision she could and I hope she comes back in some other way even stronger for what she has learned.

lyics from "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries"

So keep repeating "It's the berries"
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned.

Life is just a bowl of cherries
....
So live and laugh at it all!

(words and music by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, 1931.)

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Even amongst the feelings of being devastated by the loss of my brother, something will really make me laugh....I bought some of the seasonal beautiful bounty of cherries the other day and had them in a bowl on the counter in my kitchen and came home from work and about 10 of them were on the floor used by Blessing as rolling playtoys to bat around.....she is a character as anyone who has a calico cat as a companion will know....

Moses meets the Blob

My dear friend Dana reminded me of something funny my brother Bruce did back in the mid 70's-when you could buy 8mm movies (called Super 8), that lasted only about 3 minutes but gave the basic plot of a well known movie. They were an interesting novelty at the time and all you needed was an 8mm movie projector to thread them through and show them on the wall. Bruce had bought the 3 minute version of The Ten Commandments (can you imagine?) and I had the 3 minute teen horror film from the late 50's, The Blob, starring Steve McQueen. Well, I came home from school one day to discover that my brother had spliced the two films together into one, where Charlton Heston,as Moses, was basically fighting the Blob, an oozing mass of geletin that was devouring a city...

everthing is precious when it's final

This is a picture of my brother Bruce (in the foreground) with my English relatives in Liverpool in the late 1950's...our mother, Dorothy, is right behind him, her brothers , Roland and Joseph, are on either side of her and our grandmother, Delores, is at the far left... and Bruce- a little special being looking out at the world...