The Lady Clare

The Lady Clare
John Waterhouse, 1900

"It was the time when lilies blow,
And clouds are highest up in air,
Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe
To give to his cousin, Lady Clare."

From Lady Clare - Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This John Waterhouse painting was inspired by the Victorian poet, Alfred Tennyson. The story goes like this: Lady Clare was a rich heiress and Lord Ronald was her cousin. They were in love and engaged to be married. Lord Ronald gave her a pure white doe. Right before their wedding, the old nurse revealed that the real Lady Clare had died at birth, and she had substituted her own child. She begged Clare not to tell Ronald, but she dressed as a rustic maid (above) and told the truth. He accepted her of course, and loved her for herself and not her riches.

Manon Gropius

The girl with a pet deer reminds me of another story that happened many years after Waterhouse painted Lady Clare. But this story is sad and true. Alban Berg (1885-1935) was an Austrian composer who became friends with Gustav and Alma Mahler. After Mahler's death, Alma remarried and in 1916 they had a daughter named Manon, called "Mutzi." She was full of charm, beauty and intelligence and seemed somehow to "come from another world." She died from polio at the age of 18, and it was a deep blow to Berg who had watched her grow up. He worked non-stop on a violin concerto dedicated to Manon, inscribed "To the Memory of an Angel." He died shortly after and it was his last finished work.

Alban Berg, 1910
by Arnold Schoenberg

Here's a description of the lovely young Manon, written by a family friend:

The glass doors of Alma's music room afforded a view of a beautiful terrace and of the garden beyond. I can still see an unearthly apparition we beheld when we sat there one day after luncheon. An angelically beautiful girl of about fifteen appeared at the door with a young deer at her side. Her hand on the animal's slender neck, she gave us an unembarrassed little smile and disappeared again.

-Bruno Walter, remembering Manon Gropius

Red chalk study for Lady Clare
John Waterhouse

Dark Eyed Junco

"phased like tilted moons
half shadow, half reflection
juncos cross the snow"

From The Cuckoo's Haiku
Michael J. Rosen

We have flocks of Dark Eyed Juncos in the yard this month-- also know as the Oregon Junco (Junco hyemalis.) The Oregon variety is the best-known species of junco, which is a large genus of American sparrows. Juncos are common across the western states and in the summer range into the Arctic. Junco looks vary according to location and despite all that birdwatching going on, junco family systematics haven't been untangled. (Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of life forms, and relationships among living things through time.)

Junco range map

Juncos are ground feeders, and when alarmed they instantly flock to nearby shrubs. The best way to attract birds like juncos is to leave a big messy pile under your bird feeder. After I threw the plum tree prunings to the ground, there were dozens of excited little birds in there all weekend. Mother Nature does not like her house all neat and tidy.

" A pretty nice day..."

Ardisia
"Coral berry"

Well, just look at this beautiful thing. It grows in a neglected corner of the MOHAI parking lot, and sometimes I see it though my (now cracked) windshield if I pull up in the right spot. I suppose it will be ripped out when the Washington DOT finally gets around to razing the museum building. I wish we had such a lovely shrub in our bleak yard this time of year.

Our local TV weathermen like to put a bright spin on the day's weather. "A little breezy out" translates to 50 mph wind. "A bit chilly this morning" means 28 and black ice. You get the picture. At 6 am, Saturday was declared a "pretty nice day to get out there for yard chores." Yes, if you define "pretty nice" as 34 degrees, damp with gray overcast. Nevertheless! The chore for the day is pruning the overgrown plum tree. Why save such a nasty job for a truly nice spring day?

The Enchanted Island

The Enchanted Island
with Placido Domingo as Neptune

Pastiche: a literary, musical or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

So how could an artistic hodge-podge ever be considered an original work of art? Isn't it just imitation (or plagiarism) to steal music or stories from other artists? Well, back in the pre-copyright days of the Baroque era, it was a common practice to "borrow" music from one opera and fit it with new words for another production.

According to Wiki: The modern concept of plagiarism as immoral and originality as an ideal emerged in Europe only in the 18th century, while in the previous centuries authors and artists were encouraged to "copy the masters as closely as possible" and avoid "unnecessary invention."

"Content scraping" is copying and pasting from websites. Exactly what I did above, and often do on the blog. The line between originality and close imitation still has a nebulous boundary. Right or wrong, copying was once a fundamental part of the artistic process.

I've been thinking about all of this because last Saturday we went to the live Met broadcast of The Enchanted Island. It's a new production that takes arias, music, choruses and dances from various Baroque composers. New words were written for the "borrowed" music and the story line is cobbled together from two Shakespeare plays, The Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream. It sounds a bit wild, but it was entertaining. The singing, sets and costumes were great, plus the bonus of a performance by the great Placido Domingo. We're sold on these live broadcasts now-- well worth the price of the ticket if the MET offers the program at a movie theater near you.

Mellow yellow

Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets, --
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover's words.

Emily Dickinson

That's a perfect gem of a poem. The color yellow is one of the blessings of spring. The buds on those forsythia branches I cut right before the snowstorm finally popped open, and the bunch of yellow tulips are from the grocery store.

Yellow is the color of happiness, brightness, stimulation and warmth. Yellow is also the most visible color on the spectrum and it supposedly increases metabolism. It's also said that people are more likely to lose their tempers in yellow rooms, and babies tend to cry more in yellow rooms.


Still, nothing is more cheerful than a plain blue vase filled with yellow tulips or daffodils.

Vincent Van Gogh gets the last word: How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun.

Wind and rain

Death in Winter
Erté

The wind was howling all night and trees fell on unlucky cars and houses around town. It was sleepless in Seattle for many folks. We'll finally catch a break with the weather and the next few days are promised to be calm and dry. I'll finally get caught up on a backlog of fun chores like replacing my car windshield and cleaning up yard debris. It's been a long month in our part of the country.

I ran across this unusual (somewhat depressing) Erté drawing posted on a blog called The Pictorial Arts. The artist Erté is famous for his elegant art deco designs and the delicate sophisticated fashions are instantly recognizable. His best known image is Symphony in Black, which has been reproduced and copied countless times.

Handwriting

Of course you know that January 21-28 is National Handwriting Week. Today is John Hancock's birthday, which marks National Handwriting Day. The day was established by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association in 1977 to (surprise!) promote the consumption of pens, pencils, and writing paper.

Not so long ago, everyone was expected to write neatly, but not necessarily the same. The Victorians associated handwriting practice with character development. Disciplined, ordered handwriting demonstrated integrity, resourcefulness and a strong, upright character. In men, a "muscular" handwriting was admired, but ladies were admired for frivolous, ornate hands that took a long time to pen properly -- showing they had nothing of more importance to occupy them.

This penmanship book from the 1800's specified in the upper right corner that the version as intended for boys, meaning that boys and girls learned different styles of writing. In school we used to get a report card grade just for "penmanship and neatness." Several times a week everyone had to practice cursive writing from the same chart above the blackboard. The girls loved it; the boys not so much.

19th Century handwriting

Teaching cursive writing is on the decline, and printing out letter shapes or caps is more common with children now. That was discouraged when I was a kid because it wasn't "real" writing. Handwriting class pretty much disappeared from the curriculum in the mid-sixties. Now young people expect to keyboard and text their way through life. I think that's a shame, because there's a bias against sloppy handwriting and people still have to fill out forms and applications, or even write a letter now and then.

Many people say they can't write in cursive at all, so they print. Realistically, handwriting is "bad" only if it prevents others from being able to read it. Doctors are notorious for their bad handwriting. According to Time Magazine poor handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. That was back in 2007. In reality doctor writing isn't any worse than the general population, but life or death depends on it. More prescriptions are being filled electronically now, eliminating the little scribbled paper.

Not to scare you, but bad handwriting can be a symptom of disease. For example, with dopamine-responsive dystonia normal handwriting in childhood steadily deteriorates into very bad handwriting during adult years. Well, this is true for most people my age, and we can blame the keyboard. There was once a time when I'd write a letter to a friend or family member nearly every day. I have bundles of letters received that I've saved for years, which is nothing like a file of old emails.

Our writing style is as individual as a fingerprint. Bart Baggett is a celebrity handwriting analysis expert. He appears on Oprah and such, talking about personality traits and the handwriting strokes commonly found in the handwriting of successful people:

High Goals and Ambition (t-bars crossed on the top of the stem)

Strong self-esteem (large signature and high crossed t-bars)

Determination (heavy downstrokes below the baseline)

Persistence (not picking up your pen when you cross the letter t)

Strong Physical Drives (large and heavy y and g loops)

Long Lasting Enduring Emotions (pressing very hard on the paper)

Enthusiasm (extra long strokes to make the crossing of your t)

That all sounds a bit too simplistic. But I suppose email style also reveals our personality. In this day of computers, more and more information is sent via cyberspace. Checking the mailbox can be a bit depressing. Isn't it nice to find a handwritten note from a friend or a child between the bills and junk mail? So pick up a pen occasionally and work the kinks out of those poor keyboarded fingers. You'll make a friend (and the post office) happy with a piece of snail mail.

Nine days

We've had nine straight days of rain or snow in the Northwest, so we're happy to put the last week behind us. Out of sheer housebound boredom, I finally taught myself how to crochet granny squares. Other than that creative breakthrough, it feels like the entire week was condensed into one long snowy day. Schools and businesses were closed, streets were nearly impassable (or not worth trying) and normal routines (like exercise and healthy eating) were left by the wayside. I'm probably not the only one in Seattle feeling a bit out of it this morning as I head out for exercise class.

Saturday brought steady rain and a relatively balmy 40 degrees. The crushed bamboo and shrubs in our yard sprang up green and fresh as if the ice storm never even happened. There are a just few patches of dirty snow left. The outlying areas were not so lucky, and many yards look like this picture my brother sent from Enumclaw, where some folks are still without power.

But the early signs of spring are here, like these alliums poking up through the mulch and the flocks of excited little birds feeding in the yard all weekend.

Maxfield Parrish

Daybreak
Maxfield Parris
1897-1966

We're all tired of snow, ice, slush and wind stories. How about some pretty paintings for the weekend? I like to post old pictures on the blog from the Golden Age of Illustration, but somehow I've neglected Maxfield Parrish. He lived a long, influential life and shaped visual arts in America even though he wasn't part of any movement-- his technique was completely original.

Back in the last century (during the 60's decade) my generation believed we "discovered" Parrish. There is some truth to that, because suddenly posters and prints were everywhere. Parrish died at age 95 in 1966, right when his work was enjoying a renaissance. His paintings were a hippie's delight with dreamy color saturated landscapes, androgynous nudes and fantastic settings. The pictures have that peek-into-another-world feel, and Daybreak is probably the most famous and reproduced example.

In 1931 Parrish declared "I'm done with girls on rocks" and decided to focus on painting landscapes. These were beautiful, but of course never as popular as naked girls on rocks.

Mill Pond

Parrish also did advertising and magazine work. Early in his career illustrated children's stories, nursery rhymes and poems.

Snow White

The dazzling color Parrish blue was named after him. He used a technique called glazing where bright layers of oil color were separated by varnish. His original work has a three-dimensional quality he achieved by enlarging and cutting out photographs then covering them on the canvas with thick, clear layers of glaze. Reproductions in books and digital images can only give a hint of that deep quality.

The best place to see original Parrish art is the National Museum of American Illustration in New York.

Here's a few more dreamy examples of illustrations from children's books-

Jack and the Beanstalk

The Enchanted Prince

Sleeping Beauty


Puss n' Boots

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
How does your garden grow?

Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater
Had a wife and couldn't keep her-
Put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her, very well.

Housebound, day five

Yesterday I walked a few blocks to check on a old friend who lives nearby, and the streets in our neighborhood looked like this. We were expecting a warm-up, but the temperature didn't get above 28 and the freezing rain encased every twig and branch with heavy ice.

Finally! We're above freezing this morning and it will rain (the liquid kind) all day. Still, it will be some time until things are back to normal-- almost 300,000 are without power in the Puget Sound area. Luckily we're not one of them. To add insult to injury, a wind storm is predicted tonight. But everyone is happy this long frozen week is finally melting away.

It's good to hear the drip, drip early in the morning. The palm tree will finally feel warm rain on its frozen head...
Time will tell what survives, but it's amazing how resilient most plants are.

Like bamboo...

Here's the first lines from a famous poem by Robert Frost called Birches. It was written in New England in 1916, and it isn't "about" bamboo smashed to the ground by ice in the Pacific Northwest. Or is it? Might as well enjoy a poetic moment while you check out the wreckage.

"When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

Spring, please?

Housebound, day four

"Wintry mix" sounds like some sort of trail snack with yogurt-covered raisins and nuts. But when our perky local weather girl uses the phrase there's nothing delicious about it. We're starting Thursday with an unprecedented ice storm in Seattle, the likes of which even old-timers can't recall. Not that we're going anywhere, but right now SeaTac Airport is shut down and all the roads covered in a thick sheet of ice. The temperature is 28, and it continues to "rain" ice on the snow-covered branches and frozen ground. You get the picture.

Tree Man had it up to here yesterday...too cold to even cry.

And the bonsai are chilling out in a miniature Siberia.

Tropical fruit in the snow

It started snowing around 3 am, and the weathermen are saying we'll be blessed with 3-6 inches before it tapers off this afternoon. It's cold, so nothing will melt today or tonight. In other parts of the county people are laughing at us, but that's all it takes to shut Seattle down. The schools and some businesses are closed; the airport is in crisis mode this morning and everyone who can stay home is doing just that. John is not underfoot at home, preferring to save his vacation for real vacation, so he went to work as usual at 5:15 in Little Beep. His commute looked something like this:


How about tropical fruit on a snowy morning? Mangoes and papayas are as common as apples at the grocery store these days, and sometimes cheaper. Once upon a time, you could only get these big papayas on a tropical vacation. I think of them as "Mexican" papayas because that's where I had them first, but the sticker said this particular one came from Guatemala. It's on the small side-- they are usually immense.

What a deal at 99 cents a pound and sorry about that big carbon footprint, but I just sliced the luscious thing and squeezed lime juice on it. Platos de frutas with toast and coffee is the perfect tropical breakfast. Even better on a snowy January morning in Seattle.

Mangoes used to be an exotic, expensive fruit too, but lately Safeway runs specials for organic mangoes a cheap as a dollar each, sometimes two for a buck.
Fresh mango "salsa" is easy to make and great with fish or pork. It's just minced jalapeño, onion, tomato, dried cilantro (if you don't have fresh) with a little dressing of citrus juice, oil and salt and pepper.

What's for dinner on a snowy night? Pork loin roast with baked acorn squash. Apple pie. Wine.

La Nina returns

This winter the Seattle weather news has been no news at all. It finally arrived. John drove the Honda to work yesterday in the snow and I didn't leave the house except to take a picture of sad old Tree Man on the yard fence. Yes, I could have gone out for a slushy sloppy walk, but instead made myself useful around the house doing uninspiring chores like cleaning out the refrigerator. And so I spared my little group of followers the exciting details of my day.

On Sunday, NOAA sent a special plane over the ocean north of Hawaii to drop weather instruments where the next storm was developing. Just like they do with hurricanes. That sounds like a good bit of trouble and fuss over the possibility of snow, but they were trying to figure out how much we're going to get tonight and tomorrow before it finally turns to rain. The prediction so far is for a "major snow event" in Seattle-- several inches at least. Followed by possible flooding when it all turns to slop.

The old weather myth says there will be three snows after the forsythia blooms. Maybe in other parts of the country, but around here one good dousing of snow is usually it for the winter. That's a good thing, because the road chaos and media hysteria of multiple snow storms would be too much for poor laid-back Seattle.
I brought some forsythia branches in to "force" in a vase of hot water right before the storm hit on Sunday. That should be a cheerful sight in a few days if the yellow buds pop open.

Possibly a big mess

When we went out for a Pho lunch today at 11, some wet, pretty flakes were just starting to drift down. By the time we finished our soup about an inch had fallen, which immediately turned California Avenue into a slippery gridlock of sliding cars and spun-out buses. Oh, it was nice to drive a few blocks and just be home.

“The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.”
E.E. Cummings

As our local weathermen like to say: snowfall amounts are notoriously difficult to predict in the Puget Sound area. This morning were told to expect a "trace to one inch" in Seattle. Within an hour, 3 or 4 inches of wet snow had transformed our little world and knocked the bamboo right to the ground.

A sad sight this afternoon, but no worries-- bamboo is nothing but indestructible "grass" and will spring right up again.

More fun ahead. I can hardly wait for Slushmagedon. Here's a forecast from the Cliff Mass weather blog:

The best is yet to come. We will have a break the second half of today and much of Monday. But later Monday afternoon into Tuesday morning another batch of snow will come in with another upper trough and this could be considerably heavier. And then Wednesday morning we may have snow/rain SLUSHMAGEDON. A very warm, wet system will approach...first we could have heavy snow and then heavy rain. Possibly a big mess.

Oh no, snow?

We live in a densely populated neighborhood in a big city. If you've been to our house, then you know there's not much to see outside our windows except other houses. With the exception of the restful (boring) view in front of my desk, which looks out year-round on the green wall of our 10-foot laurel hedge. But if I stand outside on the front porch and zoom in my camera, I'll occasionally get some good sunset sky shots like this one, against the backdrop of the enormous tree across the street.

It was more like a tropical sunset last night, which is interesting because we have a messy, cold forecast of rain and snow coming up for the next week. This beautiful light lasted for only a few minutes, but it transformed everything. If it was only 50 degrees warmer, it could have been Hawaii! Well, that's a big if. Watching the news, it looks like winter has finally arrived across most of the country, making it a good weekend to watch football, movies and eat pot roast.

And being grateful you didn't get dunked in the water on a luxury Italian cruise.