Category: something else

In the last post, I couldn’t figure out how to post the other two images from Picasa. Such is the technology learning curve — much like the rainbow whose elusive pot of gold is ever just out of reach.

Anyway, the visually luscious tools of wheat production I was talking about in the last post: this threshing bag, I think it was called, and the grinding stone which required people or animals to push in a circle.
I’ve cropped the men pushing the pole out of the left side of the photo.

It’s kind of nice to send off a couple of pieces as contributions. These two went today to an auction in support of the Southern Springs Holistic Learning Center. I’m looking forward to the performance “Rumi, the Moving River” on October 19. Coleman Barks (!) will be reciting Rumi poetry in concert with dancers and musicians. 

Here’s a comic strip my mom sent me in 1984. I’m way too busy these days to illuminate my grocery list, but when I doodle I tend to use the medieval illuminator’s toolbox of figures. Maybe I’ll save one and post it. 

Well, it’s August in Florida, and both the refrigerator and my studio air-conditioning are broken. I haven’t done a creative thing in forever.

But the morning glories blooming on the compost heap this morning are an unexpected pleasure.

That’s birdseed coming up in our otherwise-unused garden. In light of the pair of hawks which have taken up residence, I feel just a little guilty luring birds to our house. But evidently not quite guilty enough to stop …

Anybody know what this bird is? It was hanging out between the front pond and the front walkway this morning, not at all flustered to have three chattering people burst in on its space. And it waited for me to go back for the camera.

I’ve looked through several bird databases online, and in several good books on North American birds, but I don’t see anything like it. Maybe it’s a young something that looks different when it’s older?

It’s not a small bird. To give you idea of scale, the larger shiny brown leaf on the ground is a magnolia leaf. Click on the picture for a better look

I’m glad to be home. And, finally, working in my studio again. I spent all Sunday morning cleaning up my studio. The chaos that ensued when I packed for, and then haphazardly unpacked from, the BookWorks workshop in May was trebled when, not two weeks later, I packed for Israel and then — 2 weeks ago — sorta-kinda-not-really unpacked again.

Anyway, it’s a pleasure to be here.

And back to my own computer.

And to have all the things I’m thinking about or maybe working on, or thinking about maybe working on … all spread out for me to look at whenever I walk by.

The very first page of the new watercolor Moleskine I picked up in Atlanta. I thought I ought to at least do one thing in it before I leave Jerusalem.

Water-soluble pencils and crayons, water. It’s the little Moleskine, the 3-1/2 x 5-1/2-inch one.

Regardless of perspective, this is the Dome of the Rock, not the Leaning Tower of Pisa 🙂

So my relative Ellen (yes, I do know exactly how we’re related, but there isn’t space in this post to go through the whole explanation) has a collection of photographs of friends in places all over the world holding up signs which say “Hello, Ellen”. I saw this collection in her office in downtown Atlanta the same day I got on the plane to Jerusalem, and I decided then that I’d add to her collection. I’ll send her a print when I get home.

The gold dome to the left of my head is the Dome of the Rock, and you can see the walls of Old Jerusalem spreading out just below the dome. I was fiddling with the timer on my digital camera when a nice guy stopped and offered to take my picture for me. The shadow at the bottom left isn’t really a shadow: it’s the shutter which failed to open completely. (Shadows like that are not so common in Israel, but a shadow can lower the temperature incredibly.) On the left is southern Jerusalem, where we’ve been staying, and on the right is East Jerusalem.

We leave for the US tomorrow. I haven’t posted much while I’ve been here, but I may make up for it today. This morning I took a long walk to the Promenade, painted a little there, and then walked back. It took most of the morning, and it was enjoyable. I took a lot of pictures on the way but, fortunately for you, I’ll only share a few. Which reminds me of a rather funny thing that happened last week. I met up with some friends from Tallahassee who were visiting Jerusalem for a few days. We shared a taxi out to Kibbutz Tzuba for a wonderful hike on the hills and down into a couple of Arab villages in the valley and back up to Tzuba for dinner. On the way there, my friend was showing me pictures of the three days of hiking they’d just done in the desert. Every time she switched to a new photo, I’d say, “Cool!” Finally, the taxi driver asked if he needed to turn down the air conditioning. I guess I should have been saying, “Yofi!” instead. Hmmm. Maybe you had to be there …

Anyway, here’s a sign I’ve been passing every day — walking or on the bus — and meaning to photograph. It took a few times of looking at it before I realized it looks funny. And then it took a few more times before I realized why it looks funny to me. Maybe only a calligrapher would notice, and maybe only a Latin calligrapher who’s been concentrating on holding a 60-degree pen angle for making Hebrew letters. Hint: it’s the “d”. The top of it has been trimmed to a 60-degree angle. Looks funny to us romance-language folks, who are used to seeing letters generally begin and end at somewhere between 0 and 45 degrees. Or 90 degrees, now that I think about it. But 60 degrees looks odd. (I mentioned this to my husband, and he just looked at me blankly. If you too are now looking at your computer screen blankly, at least I can’t see it. That’s the beauty of blogging.)

How in the world do people manage to travel and blog daily? It’s a mystery to me. It’s taken me a long time to adjust to the change in time zone and climate.

I’m continually amazed at the lushness of the flowering trees and shrubs in Jerusalem. Here’s a view of the sky from the sidewalk on Hamelitz, near our apartment. It’s quite pleasant to walk in Jerusalem if one avoids the main roads and keeps to the gardens, parks and neighborhood roads. This is easy to manage. I’ve been walking a lot here. On Thursday, I walked at least 6 of the hours between 10a.m. and midnight.

Here’s a photo of the entrance to a house near our apartment. This is a relatively high-maintenance entrance, because the overhead vegetation has to be trimmed frequently. At least that’s my impression, judging from the number of people I’ve seen trimming branches from sidewalks and walls. But the maintenance is well worth the shade! The difference between standing in the shade and standing in the sun is, well, night and day. Haha. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But still.

In between all this walking, I’ve been taking a non-correspondence version of Izzy Pludwinski’s Hebrew calligraphy correspondence course, geared toward “Latin” calligraphers. For anyone who’s taken a good course in foundational bookhand or Roman capitals, the course begins in a comfortably familiar way, with monoline skeletal forms.

An optional assignment is to amend the aleph-bet to produce a variation. In my variation, I narrowed the proportions to 2/3 of the original, and added curve to a couple of elements that are repeated throughout the aleph-bet. A thumbnail of my variation is shown at right. Click on the image for a closer look. (And please excuse the quality of the image. Microsoft Office Picture Manager can’t match Adobe Photoshop in dealing with my indifferent photography skills.)

The next lessons introduce the broad-edged pen and and x-height of 3cm (!), reduced to 8mm after some practice. This smaller size is still plenty large for at least some errors to be glaringly obvious. Not to mention the sneaking suspicion that there are glaringly obvious errors which I’m completely missing. Not to worry: Izzy will point them out to me at the next meeting.

So, all in all, the letters are not so familiar to me, but the process — of seeing and learning and seeing more and learning more — is much the same as it is for any Latin hand. It is difficult for a non-Hebrew calligrapher to work out the basic architecture of the aleph-bet, because so many different pen-made and drawn versions of it exist. So far, the most valuable thing I’m learning is that basic architecture.