Fall is coming

August is a melancholy month.

Kids go back to school. Squirrels start hoarding nuts. Rains fall quietly.

When Carl and I were newlyweds, every August 22, our anniversary, was spent having an extragavant dinner at a lovely restaurant. I would always have a champagne cocktail to start the evening, in honor of the delicious one I had at the Ritz Carlton in Boston.

This year, I spent our anniversary driving home from Washington after visiting a friend. When I arrived home, Carl was out grocery shopping. I didn't have his gift ready, nor he mine. So we spent the evening on the patio under the big umbrella and the dogs joined us.

Love affairs change over time, and ours is no different. We are more comfortable and less passionate. The good thing is we are still together

Wishful thinking

Tonight I sat on the back patio, under an umbrella, and listened to a late afternoon steady rain; water tumbling into downspouts, raindrops pattering and splashing on roof tile and concrete and all surrounded by the late summer symphony of cicadas, crickets and other buzzy creatures.

Early summer is so quiet, it's a feast for the eyes, not the ears. Flowers bloom and fireflies flicker. Late summer is noisy, if less spectacular a feast to watch. I like it best, because it has such a lovely somnolence. The world of growing and buzzing things rests, enjoying the fruits of spring and early summer's labors before fall requires them to prepare for the next cycle of growth and birth.

The evening performance put me in mind of a passage in a review this week in the New York Times. One of my favorite actresses, Bernadette Peters, is appearing on Broadway in "A Little Night Music." The reviewer was enamored of her rendition of "Send in the Clowns" but not very enthusiastic about the production as a whole. Here is part of his review:

Desirée has just come to realize that the dreams of reuniting with her now-married former lover Fredrik Egerman (Alexander Hanson) were the comforting delusions of a sultry summer night. Alone with Fredrik at last, she drops the role of the worldly seductress and carefree flirt that she assumed in order to play Fredrik’s renewed infatuation against her young lover’s obsessive devotion. The heart she has kept under wraps for too long speaks forth the unhappy truth: The love they shared in their youth and brushed aside so cavalierly cannot be recaptured without painful cost in middle age. Closer than ever before, they are also infinitely farther apart.

For some reason, drowsing on the bus on the way home from work this evening, my thoughts wandered to a long-ago high school and college (very briefly, both times) boyfriend.

When I first noticed him noticing me in high school, I was thunderstruck. I could never get over that he noticed me. In college (we both went to the same school) he showed up twice at a sub shop where I waitressed, the second time deliberately I think because he came without his then-girlfriend. I ignored him and haven't seen him since, and I dreamily wondered in the back of the bus today what would have happened if we had managed to create a relationship.

I think it would not have been great, from my viewpoint, because there was too much immaturity on both sides. But he made my heart pound. And a little night music made me think of him.

Losing it

Recently lost: Company ID.
School ID
Cell phone
Charger kit for new cell phone
Mind (If found, keep, I will just lose it again)
Something going on brain, telling it to not pay attention to much of anything
Why? No idea
Tried to upload pictures to include with this post
Camera batteries dead
Sigh
Camera now in trash can. I'll retrieve it, but it felt good to pitch it.
The pictures are of bugs, namely caterpillars which soon will be black Swallowtail butterflies.
They have been devouring the foliage of my potted fennel bulbs, which is OK; I only want the bulbs.
There are 3 of them, 2 bigger than the third. As of this writing, the big guys are just over a half inch long. They spent the past day motionless on the stalks, but this evening were on the nosh again.
We have a lot of birds in the backyard (feeders) so I am hoping these plump fellows don't become an avian appetizer. I'd love to see the metamorphosis from bug to butterfly.
Meanwhilst... I shall return with a caterpillar picture, should brain and technology cooperate.
Unless I lose it again.

Wednesday Whimsy

I love midsummer. In our quiet neighborhood crickets and locusts buzz and chirp loudly through dusk to midnight. By 5 a.m. the birds take over the symphony.
Tonight we had the proverbial stray shower drench us, accompanied by bursts of thunder loud enough to send Twist into the closet, her favorite hiding place.
Not before we had a nice interlude in the back yard when I came home from work. And before she realized I was taking her picture. Something about the sound of the camera spooks her.
So many other things I wanted to write about tonight. I blame it on the Pirates. I was watching and they were winning. Uh oh. ;)

Wednesday Whimsy

(One in a continuing series!) (Thrills and excitement to follow!)(Don't get too excited!)

Passages through DT Pburgh on a lunch-hour walk: Belgian blocks in Market Square, blockades at PNC, empty storefronts on Fifth Avenue. All attempts at reconstruction still don't address the fact that, for whatever reason, Market Square attracts a lot of people who don't have much to do except hang out. So. We shall see. And, by the way, my grandfather, Edward Hurley, loved Market Square, except in his day, the space was called the New Diamond Market.

I found the image below at the Carnegie Library Online site; it dates to after Grandad Hurley's day, but shows that Market Square actually was a covered market, kind of like Les Halles (much smaller scale!)

Here it is. Thank you, Caroline!

Art Appreciation: Milton Avery

This is "Conversation" by Milton Avery, from 1956.

I have a large framed print of this work, presently hanging in our basement family room but deserving of better display.

This painting speaks to me on a primary level, that of kinship between two women, but there are so many other things that I love about it.

Number one is the seeming ambiguity between the two women. They are touching, but leaning away from each other despite the conversational tone of their poses. The viewer is left to wonder what kind of intimacy exists between these two people. Anger? A disagreement between longtime friends? Or just a momentary shift in positions during a long conversation?

I also wonder what the artist intended in painting one person in sharp detail, the purple girl, and another in softer, fuzzier more ethereal fashion, the blue girl. Blue is so ephemeral she looks ready to float away. Purple has her legs crossed, on firmly on the ground, hands clasped and a shoulder on the sofa. She is not going anywhere.

This painting also has a strong horizontal composition: The four bands of background color; the women's gazes, seemingly pulling the women toward each other, and the placements of their hands. Even the shapes of their heads mirror the shapes of their knees.

What, finally, I love about this painting, is, that like a wonderful biography or piece of fiction, I never tire of it. Each time I enjoy it, I see something new it it.

Shake Up at La VieC!

I’m sitting in my living room, thunder rolling outside in a very rainy dusk. Power is out, but the laptop has a full battery. Still daylight-ish, and I am wishing it was a Saturday or Sunday morning (as it was not when this was written) so I could be snuggling under the bedcovers and drowsing to the symphony of thunder and rain. Another wish: I wish I had another good day for every day that I wished time away.

(Warning! Another paragraph beginning with “I” to follow.)

I have been mentally constructing a new direction for this blog. I do fairly well, usually, writing off the cuff, but off the cuff has no structure. So, new direction means “topics,” as the Mackenzie Brothers of Second City TV called them. Structure means schedule and so I will address each of these topics in a Sunday and Wednesday posting schedule. Posting every day, I have come to realize is unrealistic and exhausting.

This list will be edited down for expediency, but as of now, here are the subjects I want to cover:
*Art and Design
*Birds and Dogs (birds, with help from family, dogs, mostly mine)
*Family and Girlfriends.
*Pittsburgh (My Mom was born here!)
And the occasional piece of whimsy, craziness and/or sarcastic humor. That last will be a challenge. I (think I) have become a more compassionate/less critical person thanks to therapy but I hope I have not lost my very precious prickliness (VPP).

Shall I call it Katy And? No, there will be no voting on the name. None of this community crap. I will decide, you will read.

Love and air kisses.

Kate