I Like Pigeons Because Nobody Else Does

I am baffled as to why this series of paintings hasn’t gotten more press. Here’s the first, Spring:

I walked into one of the galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the four of them sung to me in unison. I was immediately struck by them. I’m not an art afficionado but any means, but I do have some knowledge on the subject and I never heard of either these paintings or the artist. My picture does nothing to showcase the photographic detail of the flowers or the brilliance of the colors, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. They were done by a Belgian artist named Léon Frédéric in 1894. You can visit the museum’s webpage here and listen to a short audio commentary about it.

It tempts me to imagine that if ee cummings was an artist instead of a poet, that’s what he might have painted.

this is the garden:colours come and go,
frail azures fluttering from night’s outer wing
strong silent greens serenely lingering,
absolute lights like baths of golden snow.
This is the garden:pursed lips do blow
upon cool flutes within wide glooms,and sing
(of harps celestial to the quivering string)
invisible faces hauntingly and slow.

This is the garden. Time shall surely reap
and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled,
in other lands where other songs be sung;
yet stand They here enraptured,as among
The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep
some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

ee cummings

My Uncle Larry and Aunt Ruthie moved back to Pennsylvania a couple of years ago after a whirlwind trip around the world to mark the close of their years abroad. They’d lived in Colorado for twenty years, then Alice Springs, Australia for five and decided to return to Lancaster County to be closer to family. They’ve been pretty much everywhere on the planet so it’s really nice to be near them again after being apart for most of our lifetimes. Larry still works in Alice for three months of the year so I am hoping to take the opportunity to tag along with him later this year or next. I fell in love with outback Australia and am itching to return.

One of the things that was a large part of the draw to move back here was being able to spend time at Larry’s farm. He bought 40 acres of land near Mastersonville and enrolled it in Pennsylvania’s CREP programwhich is an acronym for Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. Landowners voluntarily enroll in the program which rewards them for installing and implementing conservation programs on their land.  CREP’s goal is to increase biodiversity, increase habitat for native animals and plants, protect streams and wetlands and other environmentally concerned initiatives. The greater portion of the land is enrolled in the program which means that it will be left as woodland and meadow. A smaller portion was left out of the program so that he could erect a small barn and have a vegetable garden.

Today we installed an irrigation system and plastic in order to keep weeds at bay:

One of the coolest projects he has going on is apiculture, or beekeeping. He has two hives now, but as soon as we get the hang of things, we’ll probably install a few more. Each hive can produce up to 90 pounds of honey each season…that is, if they don’t fall victim to colony collapse disorder.

This is going to be a fabulous project but I need to do some reading as well as attend a couple of local beekeeper club meetings to figure out what’s going on. They are of the most complex and interesting insects. I sat and watched them for about ten minutes as they communicated to each other while coming and going:

Larry’s already installed some bluebird houses and bird feeders, but I’d really like to do a bat house and an owl house later this year.

Little did he know when he purchased the land that it would come with an epicurean’s dream; thousands of black raspberry bushes. This year has proven to yield a crop of enormous proportions, probably due to all the rain we’ve received. I picked two boxes today and am preparing to make a pie.

Hopefully I won’t get chiggers and/or poison ivy, two things which pretty much wrecked every summer for me when we lived in North Carolina.

Today I left with beets, wax beans, red onions and a crapload of black raspberries. Not bad payment for a little bit of work!

This kind of thing just thrills me to no end. While touring the art museum yesterday I came upon this painting

done in 1745 by a guy named Canaletto and was immediately transported back to Venice when I visited there in 1991. I climbed the bell tower and then walked along the water in front of the palace. Those columns with the lion sculptures on top were still there, the gondolas with tourists still operating and the waterfront promenade still a favorite of Venice’s guests.  It just blows me away to stand there and honestly know that scene.

When a painting executed 264 years ago makes that kind of connection with me, it sends chills up my spine. I find it thrilling to be able to have that kind of relationship with a work of art, especially one featured in a fine museum, looked upon by hundreds of thousands of people every year. Unlike most of the other paintings I’ve seen, I wasn’t looking at this one as a detached outsider, wondering what it was like in Venice centuries ago.  That is a singular experience and one in which, I think, its artist would take great delight.

I am positively smitten with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It was in my backyard all those years I lived in Pennsylvania but I never visited until today. Gene starts work on July 6th, so in the meantime we’re making up for lost time on the attractions and arts scene in eastern PA. He’d been there years ago before we met and told me that he remembered it as an exceptional museum.  That was something of an understatement. I can honestly say that it’s one of nicest museums I’ve visited anywhere worldwide…well, excepting the Hermitage in Leningrad and the Vatican Museum, but those places are on another level altogether and one can’t really include those in what’s typically thought of as a museum. They’re fantastic, vast, seemingly infinite repositories of pillage, plunder, unbridled wealth, greed and history. Some rather unpleasant history too, but those collections have to be seen to be believed.

Anyway, the scope of their collection is staggering; armor, textiles, sculpture, photography, furniture and paintings with a total of over 225,000 works of art. Not only do they display the works themselves, but many of them are displayed in context, meaning that certain galleries have been turned into rooms and salons found in French palaces, well-to-do English houses and Dutch country homes. Not reproductions either, but the real rooms transported and assembled in Philadelphia.

Most of you will know the museum from this angle

which is a shot from one of the best movies ever made, Rocky. Rocky triumphantly ran up those stairs to the tune of Gonna Fly Now, enabling underdogs around the world to get up off their couches and go out and kick some ass. I’ve seen that movie more times than I can count and it still does something funny to me guts every time I watch that scene.

We visited the armor collection first. I’ve seen armor before, but never in this condition, volume or detail. And it all came from one guy! Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch was apparently mad for top-notch armor and collected enough to fill several museum salon rooms. It’s damned impressive:

Look at the detail on this breastplate

and jousting stick

Those items are from the mid 1500 or 1600s, I believe, and they look brand new. This page at the museum’s website shows the collection.

A bust of my favorite historical figure, renaissance man, Ben Franklin:

We didn’t see nearly all we’d intended before we needed to eat a late lunch, but our newly purchased memberships will give us a year’s free admission in addition to some other excellent benefits. We’re planning to return next week and also visit the Mütter Museum:

In 1858, Thomas Dent Mütter, retired Professor of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College , presented his personal collection of unique anatomic and pathological materials to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia . Our collection now boasts over 20,000 unforgettable objects. These include fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens; skeletal and dried specimens, medical instruments and apparati; anatomical and pathological models in plaster, wax, papier-mâché, and plastic; memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians; medical illustrations, photographs, prints, and portraits. In addition, we offer changing exhibits on a variety of medical and historical topics.

I couldn’t have worded that unique anatomic and pathological materials bit. My phrasing would have gone more like this: freakish and gut-wrenching human deformities, tumors and general fucked-up stuff that will make your skin crawl but from which you won’t be able to turn your head. I can’t wait.

I have a lot more photos to show, just not the time this evening to get them posted.

Will it ever stop?! It’s rained almost constantly since we’ve been here…but it’s not all that bad. It feels so lush and tropical, especially after spending the last several years in Southern California. I’ve been sidelined all week with a cold that is now abating, but then hit with a migraine the last two days so I’ve not been out and about as much as I wanted.

I just finished organizing my attic sewing room so I can resume production tomorrow. First up: another shirt for Gene. Second: another nest for Little Buddy. He follows me around all day long from room to room and it’s become apparent that we can’t continue to move his one bed continuously. He’s going to need two more, one for my office and another for the sewing room.

In between deluges today I managed to get a few shots of the flowers in our yard:

Is there a better way to usher in our new life in Lancaster than by spending our first leisurely Saturday evening at the Lancaster Liederkranz’s annual Sommerfest? I don’t think so. Friends of ours called and asked if we’d like to attend the festivities with them Saturday evening and since we’re not ones to turn down a good German festival, we agreed. The last one we attended was in Tokyo. While a ton of fun, I have to admit that this one was a little better. In case you aren’t familiar with the Liederkranz…

The Liederkranz is a German Singing Society and Cultural Club, established in 1880 to promote and perpetuate German singing, dancing, music, language, foreign exchange and culture for its members and their guests.

This wasn’t some ridiculous faux “Dutch” event as is used as a means to draw in tourists around here, but a real German festival complete with sausages, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, music and most importantly, German beer.

This guy, Maxwell Gresh, partied to the extreme and is now paying the price for wearing a lampshade on his head;

Immediately before passing out, someone asked him if he was tired. He couldn’t even speak. Just lifted his head from the table, nodded and put it back down again. Honestly, some people just can’t control themselves. And at a family event yet. Sheesh. It’s a good thing he’s wearing diapers because he’s going to need them.

I heard this womam growl through clenched dentures, ”Step on my bunions one more time you old bastard and you might not want to fall asleep tonight”:

Liederhosen are pretty cool and this young man looks dashing…except for that sock:

Traditional costume and dance:

See?!  There’s culture around here!

Little Buddy continues to improve at an astonishing rate. Lynn called last night to report that all biopsies were benign nodules and that he should be just fine.

Things here at the house are coming along slowly. The attic, which has been designated my sewing room, has turned out to be the catch-all area for things that don’t have a place on the first two floors. It’s a disaster and will take a significant amount of time to get situated. Gene reports for work on July 6th so in the meantime we’ve been driving around the county attending public auctions. We need almost everything – furniture, wine glasses, carpets – but don’t want to walk into a furniture store and buy some anonymous piece of pressboard crap made in China. We decided that we’d take out time and search until something really strikes us, even if that means the dining room sits empty for a year.

Here are some additional photos from Holtwood Dam:

the remnants of the canal that ferried coal from the center of the state to the Chesapeake Bay:

A view of the Susquehanna River and Holtwood Dam far in the background:

A Northern water snake, Nerodia sipedon:

I’m pretty sure this is a type of long-legged fly:

Little Buddy underwent a splenectomy on Wednesday at Companion Animal Hospital in Elizabethtown, performed by Lynn Libby and Mary Ellen Nixon, two of the finest vets I happen to know. I worked there for a number of years in college and I know how they operate. They sincerely care about their patients and veterinarians don’t come much sharper than Lynn.

In addition to the large hemangioma, they found a smaller nodule on his spleen and three additional lesions on his liver. All were biopsied and sent for analysis, but there is a good chance they’re age-related changes rather than malignancies.

The hemangioma ruptured as they were taking it out, so it’s a good thing he went under the knife when he did. If it had ruptured while still inside he may have bled to death. He is doing remarkably well post-surgery and other than taking his steps more gingerly than usual, one might say that he’s not behaving much differently than normal – eat, poop, lay on couch – his normal routine hasn’t been greatly disrupted.

Thanks for all the inquiries with regard to his health over the last couple of days. He’s built up quite a fan base in Lancaster and the concern is genuinely appreciated.

In other canine news, we’re going to meet a new family member this evening – Niko, the 115 pound Czechoslovakian German Shepherd. More details to follow.

We decided to take a break from organizing and unpacking (which is proceeding at a glacial pace) and Gene, my brother and I went to Holtwood Dam this morning to poke around in the river and adjacent wooded area. We found one of my favorite beetles, an eyed elater or eyed click beetle:

The beetle tried to defend itself by lying still and keeping its legs tucked firmly underneath its body, but after only a few mintues it grew tired of my oohing and aahhing and decided to flee. I was lucky enough to snap this shot as it prepared to take off:

No more trips to parents’ homes to check email, we are finally back online today at our own house. I am working on getting an Outlook account set up which should be easy, in theory. Something’s not right, so I guess I’ll have to call Comcast and waste someone’s time explaining it to me. This happens every stinking time we move.

I’ll back up to last week and post some photos I took in Texas. Gene’s brother and his family live near a small town called San Marcos which is just south of Austin. We arrived there Saturday evening and hung around for about 24 hours. We had originally planned on staying longer but figured that if we could get a few hours’ driving in on Sunday evening, we’d arrive in PA on Tuesday at a decent hour.

Texas was not at all what I’d expected. A lifetime of being fed stories of the wild west and its underbelly had created an inaccurate picture, one that was created in Hollywood. I didn’t expect to see wild javelinas (roadkill, but still the authentic animal), beautiful, rolling, grass-covered hills or a landscape rife with bird-life and insects. But it was all there and I regret not being able to explore it in greater detail.  Here are just a couple of shots I took in a few short hours. Imagine what I’d have found in a few days. The first is an ironclad beetle:

Is that not a stunning creature?! One needs to employ the use of a hammer or drill when mounting these as specimens, its elytra are that hard.

A family of toads living under a rock in the yard for the last three years:

I am pretty sure these are the infamous cane toad. I don’t know what other type of toad would get that large. These things were huge.

The scorpion that stung Gene in the back of the leg while he slept:

I think it’s  a striped bark scorpion. We were sleeping on an absolutely hateful air mattress and he’d rolled onto the concrete floor to cool off. A few minutes later he was freaking out, saying that something had stung him and he thought it was a scorpion. We turned on the lights and searched but didn’t find anything. I chalked it up to an ant or cactus thorn and went back to sleep while he spent the rest of the night on the couch. The next morning when packing up the matress and sheets, this guy tumbled out of the bedding. I guess I spent the night with it which is fine with me. It hardly left a mark on Gene, either not releasing its venom or Gene not reacting to it. I thought the whole episode was cool, but he felt otherwise.

A reduviid on the back porch:

Pick one of those up and you’ll find out why they’re colloquially called assassin bugs.

And a beautiful grasshopper:

I had the opportunity to do some human photography while the kids were playing and eating birthday cake. Now I see why so many people are into child photography. They make good subjects because they’re dynamic and the last thing they’re paying attention to is the geek behind the camera:

The movers came on Saturday and we’re doing our best to get things organized and out of boxes. This move went well and I hope it’s the last one for a very long time. Our internet will be installed on Tuesda, so I’ll be back online that evening. Right now we are stealing a very weak and inermittent connection from someone in our neighborhood.
I received some dreadful news this morning when I took Little Buddy to the vet for a lyme vaccine. He has a very large tumor on his spleen. Gene mentioned feeling something there over a year ago, but since the veterinarians in California never said anything, I didn’t give much thought to Gene’s observations. I should have. Given that he’s had it that long and the fact that he’s not sick makes us think that it’s benign. His surgery is scheduled for Wednesday so we’ll know when he’s open up.
Here’s an x-ray of the tumor. It’s unmistakable:

We made it to Pennsylvania after a long day of driving yesterday. Nice to be back.

We’re in another La Quinta with the dogs and birds, this time in Knoxville, Tennessee. Only one more day of travel.
Jake, the driver hauling our stuff, called today and said his truck broke down. He won’t arrive until June 9th or 10th. I’m not terribly upset about it but I feel really bad for him. He’s a very nice guy and owns his truck, so all the bills are on him. Apparently the transmission crapped out and he has to wait around until it gets fixed.

We arrived at Gene’s brother’s in San Marcos, just south of Austin, yesterday afternoon. We hung around today and celebrated their youngest daughter’s first birthday. I got some great photos of some toads and insects that I’ll post later on. We really regretted leaving so soon, but hit the road at 5m and made it as far as Longview, Texas. We’re in a LaQuinta hotel for the night and hope to make it to Tennessee tomorrow.

The highlight of the trip were several javelina lying on the side of the road as we drove from El Paso. I don’t like to see that, but it was still interesting to see the animal, even if it was dead.