Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes | Tagged birds, hawk, Inspiration, nature, Photography, trees, urban landscape | 1 Comment »
Bright afternoon light on the Charles River.
Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes | Tagged beauty, Charles River, Inspiration, light, nature, Photography, urban landscape, water | Leave a Comment »
I simply needed to move. To get up. To get unstuck. And so I rose and walked over to the flower vases. They sit upon one of the small tables in the kitchen. I am a very lucky person … they are currently full of flowers.
I selected a stem and tugged free a few petals, arranged them on a plate, in no particular order except for the order they formed upon falling. More flowers I picked …
With the motion eventually came a bit of creative release. And joy at the beauty I have before me.
I am a very lucky person. 🙂
Posted in Branches, Inspiration | Tagged beauty, colors, flowers, Inspiration, Photography | 1 Comment »
In the words of Rebecca Solnit, “It’s very important to say that hope is not optimism. Optimism is a sense that everything’s going to be fine no matter what we do. Hope is something completely different. The kind of activist hope I believe in is that, although we don’t know what will happen, that uncertainty still means there’s grounds for intervening even without being sure of the outcome.”
An excerpt from a very thought provoking piece that is well worth a read: https://blog.longreads.com/2016/12/22/we-have-to-resist-rebecca-solnit/#
Posted in Inspiration | Tagged activism, culture, hope, Inspiration, Photography, Rebecca Solnit | 3 Comments »
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and just best wishes to all. 🙂
Posted in Nature Notes | Tagged beauty, Belle Isle Marsh Reservation, ice, Inspiration, nature, Photography, urban landscape, water | 1 Comment »
Playing around with textiles. We’ll see what the new year holds. 🙂
Posted in Inspiration | Tagged beauty, creativity, design, fashion, Inspiration, Photography, scarves, silk, silk scarves, textiles | 3 Comments »
Posted in Inspiration | Tagged beauty, flowers, gifts, Inspiration, Photography, red | 1 Comment »
Hope by George Frederick Watts
In 1959, Martin Luther King Jr would open a sermon with these words about shattered dreams, “Our sermon today brings us face to face with one of the most agonizing problems of human experience. Very few, if any, of us are able to see all of our hopes fulfilled. So many of the hopes and promises of our mortal days are unrealized. Each of us, like Shubert, begins composing a symphony that is never finished. There is much truth in George Frederick Watts’ imaginative portrayal of Hope in his picture entitled Hope. He depicts Hope as seated atop our planet, but her head is sadly bowed and her fingers are plucking one unbroken harp string. Who has not had to face the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams’?”
English painter George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) would paint the first of several versions of Hope in 1885. Its symbolism would prove very popular and over time it would be massively reproduced. I read that by the 1930s however his work fell out of fashion and major galleries like The Tate removed his work from permanent display. So I do wonder when, where and how Martin Luther King first saw Hope. I do know when a young Barack Obama learned of the painting. It was in 1990. Pastor Jeremiah Wright would deliver a sermon, The Audacity to Hope. Wright’s words would move the young student who would eventually rouse a whole nation (mostly) with a notion that he would call, The Audacity of Hope.
So where is hope these days? In part its a personal question that we each have to grapple with on any given day depending on what’s happening in our lives.
Hope by Edward Burne-Jones, 1896
Watts and later his friend Edward Burne-Jones each painted variations of Hope during dark periods in their lives. For Watts that period included the death of his adopted daughter’s child. Burne-Jones had been commissioned by a wealthy American to paint a dancing figure but as he dealt with the death of his friend and colleague William Morris he asked if instead he might paint Hope. I think of hope as something you hold on to or reach out for. And sometimes it even settles around you like a warm blanket when you least expect it. Or, as Emily Dickinson wrote,
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –
I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.
Sources & Additional Reading
http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/shattered-dreams
Click to access July1962-March1963DraftofChapterX,ShatteredDreams.pdf
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42889
Posted in Inspiration | Tagged art, beauty, Edward Burne-Jones, Emily Dickinson, G.F. Watts, hope, Inspiration, Martin Luther King Jr, musings, painting | 1 Comment »
If you follow my blog you may know that there is a young baker whom I’ve challenged (quite by accident) to produce expressions of culinary simplicity. Her first expression involved dark chocolate and cinnamon. The second was a shortbread cookie … with a center of soft rose-colored guava paste. The third expression was probably the most on point … a macaroon with just four ingredients, like a little sweet cloud with a crust. And for my birthday out of nowhere appears a bag of sweet morsels, still simple, just colored orange ’cause that’s a favorite color I mentioned one day, and just a few sprinkles to brighten the day. I’m a rather lucky person, I have to say. 🙂
Posted in Inspiration, Kitchen Inspirations | Tagged baking, beauty, cookies, creativity, food, food photography, Inspiration, macaroons, Photography | 2 Comments »
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Words + Images 