Mary McCloskey

Buckminster Fuller makes a jungle gym

 
The village has been hard at work all summer remodeling our old park.  New tennis courts with a blue surface and this jungle gym that looks surprisingly like a creation by Buckminster Fuller. I'm not really sure if it really is a jungle gym. I couldn't get close enough to see through the fence. It could be a sculpture. The new blue curiosity.

No matter. It was a wonderful, sunny, blue-sky day and the walk through the park was well worth it.  I stopped for a while to watch a group of young men playing pick-up football, which is rare around here where all sports are usually programmed. You could tell from all the hoots and hollers that they were really enjoying themselves.

Hope these sunny days continue for a while.

Twilight: 5 p.m.

So much depends...

on a  yellow umbrella glazed with rainwaiter.

This scene put me in mind of William Carlos Williams poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."

"So much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain water..."

One of those quiet, rainy days. Spent the afternoon at the art league studio working on several photos and encaustic.  The ride home was hectic and gray and then this fellow with the yellow umbrella crossed my path.

Wavy windows

   

I'm cheating today. Took these photos a few days ago of some neat high-rise windows. Working on another project so I thought I'd post these. Very windy here today, just as it was the day I took these so you get to see the moving shadows on the windows. 

Happy Saturday!

 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...

Every  year at this time, as soon as the first cool weather appears, the blossoms on our  white hydrangea bush change a delicious rosy hue.  And I instinctively think of the first line of Keats'  poem, "To Autumn."

Living Room Gallery

Had lots of fun today visiting the Living Room Gallery at 1530 W. Superior in Chicago. The gallery serves as a real estate office too. That's Brooklyn, the dog, sunning himself in the window. There's also another dog, Betty, who hangs out there.

After spending time in the gallery, took a walk through the eclectic neighborhood to take pictures. Lots of old peeling paint, but lots of new paint too. Definitely a neighborhood on the move. Especially loved all the flowers everywhere, particularly the giant sunflowers. Warmed me up on this very cool afternoon.

Take a look:

 

A material girl

I ordered a sampling of different kinds of Japanese rice paper recently--large sheets, hoping to print some photos on them soon. When I opened up the round tube they'd been shipped in, I was so taken with the feel and texture, the "hand" of the paper. So beautiful.

A spot for dreaming

It was an absolutely spectacular day today. Blue, blue sky, nary a cloud. A perfect day for long walks, listening to the gentle breathe of the wind as it flies through the trees. Yesterday I went for a walk late in the afternoon to see the progress of construction in our local park.  All new tennis courts as well as this soon to be wandering pond planted throughout with new  prairie plants. This time next year it should be a great place to sit and just dream.

Almost Famous

The Cure at Troy

  
Seamus Heaney said best what I feel today. This is an excerpt from his poem, "The Cure at Troy."

Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.

  

The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.

  

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

 

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

 

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

 

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.