Sunday Quote

i lean back and feel
the warmth of you traveling
from one place to a/
nother.  and i am gone.  home/
bound to where you also live.

- Sonia Sanchez, Tanka

Posties about ghosties

Quel horror! The glowsticks all conked out after an hour.  Hoarding of leftover holiday items to the rescue - little battery operated tea lights we purchased for Halloween so the pumpkins wouldn't burn down the house with candles - then Halloween got crazy and we never did carve pumpkins, just let them sit in full vegetable glory on a bench outside.  These work even better.  Look out, late night dog walkers! (Our little skittish dog was thoroughly unimpressed).

Snow ghosties

Have wanted to make snow ghosties after seeing first a Calvin and Hobbes where he made a snow army and secondly, a bit in a book about winter activities for kids where they said put glow sticks in as eyes.  A perfect storm - no pun intended or maybe yes - of snow day and leftover glowsticks from Halloween.  Enlisted youngest son (by means of lobbing snowballs at his window) but he did not share my delight so much...and then we had to shovel out the driveway.

Sunday Quote

Who's gonna take your place, fill your shoes?
Who's gonna take your place, fill your shoes?
You never used to look behind you, that isn't what you'd do
Didn't leave a thing behind you but the miss you blues.

- Mark Knopfler

Sunday Quote

He saw clearly how plain and simple - how narrow, even - it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence.

- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
    

Snow and shadows and sweet gum balls

We had a sweet gum tree in the back yard growing up.   It fell to me to rake up the spiky sweet gum balls when they fell, sometimes an old sheet spread out in the yard, full of them.  The tree was huge. 
My father, who loved a nightly fire in the fireplace dearly, got the idea that they would be the perfect kindling one early winter and built up tiers of twigs and sweet gum balls, balled up newspaper, and a seasoned log.  He struck a match and at first the blaze was fantastic.  Then what must have been thousands of tiny insects came swarming out of the sweet gum balls where they'd been apparently lodging.  I remember clouds of insects, my mother leaping up horrified, my dad rushing around opening doors and windows and sheets of newspaper and waving the bugs outside. I was at that turning age - just young enough to appreciate the drama and excitement of it all and yet old enough to experience the humor of the situation.  Over the years, whenever I come across these spiky wonders on the ground, I wonder how many other people have tried the same experiment with the same results? 

Sunday Quote

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.

- Ezekiel 36:26

Sunday Quote

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.  The fears are paper tigers.  You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

- Amelia Earhart

Sunday Quote

The Angels were all singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon
Or curb a runaway young star or two.

~Lord Byron

Mary Poppins

The umbrella, the author's own, as well as her own doll.  Bits and string snips from the New York Public Library's fine exhibit of children's literature.  I had an ardent love for Mary Poppins growing up, a doll (plastic with long brown hair and her own carpet bag), the record which I memorized, a patient Mother who took me several times to see the movie.  Last year's wonder, meeting Julie Andrews at a local bookstore, the Voracious Reader,  - worth the wait in the cold.  She was elegant, warm, and gracious. 

Sunday Quote

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

- Neil Gaiman

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Farewell in lieu of Sunday Quote

Oh, I loved him.  Such a crush that went on for years.  When others swooned for rock stars and young actors, he was the one I admired.  My mom even bought me a Broadway ticket years ago when he made a rare and special appearance on Broadway so I could see him in person.  A lion in winter, Mr. Chips, the one striding on top of the train as Lawrence of Arabia.  Thank you and farewell, Mr. O'Toole.

Manhattan all decked out for Christmas

The building with the scaffolding is St. Patricks which no one in their right mind would ever venture into this time of year...especially with all the scaffolding inside too...which of course one would not know unless they went inside.  Oy.

The windows, the windows!  Lots of video/media content this year which had us old school gals asking plaintively - where are the doll houses?  the wee villages?  the puppets?  Tiffanys had the fancy white mansions which were okay - but frankly, ever since their magnificent Fox windows a few years ago based on the Roald Dahl book turned movie, it all pales. 

 

loved the tribute to Al Hirschfeld windows...and right outside Rockefeller Center, Saks had a countdown ...which was exploding stars, dancers, ribbons, lots of glitz, and then this familiar looking guy popping out of a box.  Very fun. 

In between all this wandering about we hit up the children's book art exhibit at the NYPL and the Magritte exhibit at MOMA (can you say EXHAUSTED with me?) but that's another post this week...because here are the angels and the tree which is, of course, year after year, absurdly crowded and ridiculously touristy and yet amid all the crush and photo opps and clamour, it still is magical.

Did I get an extra shot in of the tree by accident?  Ah well, blogger makes it too hard to backtrack and besides...it's a short season.  A fun day bringing back memories of all the excursions in to the tree ("Let the Lady with the pram through!")  Enjoy all the lights and festivals you can.  Merry, merry.