REDONDOWRITER'S SACRED ORDINARY

Just to Bring a Smile to Your Face - and to Ask a Question

If you read here, you know how much I enjoyed the Los Angeles Brewery Art Walk which I attended with my family for the first time this past April. I'm trying to get information about the Fall 2011 event but so far no luck. 

I thought you might get a kick out of this photo of my daughter Christy standing next to this motel assemblage by an artist whose name I unfortunately neglected to write down. If someone recognizes this work, I'd love to include it, so drop me a note.

This photo conjures up a funny story told by my former husband when I first met him in 1957. Those were such innocent days compared to now. A buddy of his told him how he had nervously checked into a motel with a girl when he was in the Marines and when asked to write his name, he wrote Ray's name. Like most stories from our youth, this one gets resurfaced repeatedly and it still brings a laugh. Probably because these two guys are now 76-years-old and way on the far side of the wild side of their youth. 

So, does this photo conjures up any stories for you? And, how in the heck do artists come up with their creations? I know I'm always surprised about my own creation. 

Memorial Day: Thank You To Everyone Who Has Served

This afternoon my friend Mary Lou and I went to the City of Redondo Beach's annual Memorial Day commemoration in Veteran's Park which is only two blocks from my house. It was held for the first time at the new Veterans Memorial which was dedicated last November. Raising the funds for the memorial is a grassroots movement by several local vets and though it is not completed, it has been amazing how much they have already accomplished. 

John Bogert of the local newspaper, the Daily Breeze had a wonderful article yesterday about how the memorial came to be if you are interested. I took a half dozen photos today, but the really good photos are at the Daily Breeze photo site. 

This note to fallen soldier Cpt. Sean Brock from his mom rested on the war memorial today. There were a handful of Gold Star parents in the audience today. I felt really teary standing by this tribute. 

The Chair of the Redondo Beach Veterans Memorial Committee, John Simpson, who goes to my church, read the poem Flanders Field which I had not read or heard since high school. Here it is from YouTube. 

 

 

 

 

 

Variations in Blue: Postcards From Paradise

Since late last night, my Internet slowed down to a snail's crawl. I'm fairly savvy about computers so I've done everything under the sun I could think of and determined it was Verizon. Did I mention I am not an extremely patient person? But, I am extremely tenacious. I won't send a postcard screen shot of me this afternoon; it was not paradise! But yesterday I did take several shots of my patio and garden which is my little paradise. I'm glad I did it then because now the wind is very wicked! But, Verizon tech has me up and running and are sending a new modem. It seems the six-year-old one I have is petering out. 

Villa Redondo's Blue Paradise Patio

Angelic paradise petunias.

Buddha in blue.

Look closely in the blue gazing ball and you will see me in my bathrobe with camera.

Blue pottery with yellow something-or-others. 

I have a white wicker chair waiting for you so you can experience Redondo Beach blue. 

Thanks to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon for giving Postcards from Paradise a home. 

Have an Artistic Eye? Imagine What I Can Create With This

This is an art project waiting to happen, not something profound already made that I want you to analyze. But, I would like your input about what I might make this into. On June 21 I am off work for the summer and I've already begun laying out some larger mixed media projects I want to tackle. This is one of them.

I picked this up at a garage sale for $2 about six weeks ago and I've already placed it in the patio so I have to look at it every day and begin envisioning what it could become. It is 24" x 36" and is an old window that someone built a shadow box that is 6" deep behind. What you see inside is a piece of metal attached to a board. It is nailed in, so I'll remove it and it will become my palette. Because it is a shadow box, I assume I want to make a mixed media assemblage of sorts probably featuring a female face. 

I am not a trained artist and have only been doing dimensional work for a year or so. If you enlarge this photo, can you gaze at it and give me some ideas? I'm not very creative coming up with a plan which works when a piece is smaller. It seems like this one has to be planned out. I'd be very grateful! 

 

Haiku My Heart: Faces Art Journal Page

Just in case you can't read my handwriting, here is the haiku on today's art journal page.

Five placid women

hiding behind unknown fears

fooling only men. 

For more haikus, visit Rebecca's blog at Recuerda mi Corazon. 

Some Thoughts on My Mom Emily and When Roses Trigger Nostalgia

It is so odd to be longing so much for my mother right now as she died at 71 in 1967. I am 73-years-old and she, more than my father or ex-husband, is coming to me in dreams almost every night. My dad and ex are also strong dream characters for me, however. 

In years past my longing for my mom after her death came more often when I was either ill or very emotionally challenged. I'd have to say that as far as I know I am as healthy as I've been in a long while, knock on wood, and very few "things" or "people" that used to be emotional triggers still are.

A superstitious me wonders if I am being prepped for the meeting we will one day have after my death, but all I can say is that I have no sense that I'm going anywhere anytime soon--except up to Washington in the summer. But who knows?

All the disasters the planet and its people are currently experiencing have definitely played into my mother nostalgia, I'm sure. Life is so impermanent. One minute you are there and then you aren't. My heart breaks for families who are split because of these tragedies. They are termed natural disasters but nothing feels very natural about them when you are personally affected. And then is the constant bombardment of all the wars and violence on the planet. On some level I must feel very unsafe and in need of my mom, who would save me if she could.

The week before mother's day I was inundated with dreams and longings and that had a lot to do with our flower ritual at church when I was a kid. My mom was a superb grower of all flowers, but she especially loved her roses. On mother's day we would both wear one red rose which signified our mom's were living. Others wore white roses because their mom's had died. Next year I will buy a white rose to wear in her memory. 

Of my two remaining sisters, Virginia, 85, has been in the hospital--again--and in rehab--again; she has now returned to her assisted living facility, but she was like my surrogate mom and I feel so sad about how her life, thanks to the Parkinsons, has narrowed so. On the other hand, I'm grateful her late husband planned so well with a very comprehensive long-term care policy.

My 87-year-old sister Betty moved today into a senior living facility in her home in Tumwater, WA. The last several months of lung cancer treatment, then a gall bladder surgery, and a TIA, has made her feel she is no longer safe at home. She is very open about the difficulty in making this decision was as she is fiercely independent. Largely she had a good and productive life, but I'm very sad--and I have to admit that I hate it when I project what will come of me. 

All this plays into my current nostalgia for my own mom. So, when photographing a student art show this afternoon with my old Olympus digital cam, which I rarely use, I decided to visit a few of our many rose gardens on this campus. Here are three of them. 

Days of wine and roses laugh and run away, like a child at play. -- Johnny Mercer.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole world. -- Kate D. Wiggins

Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. -- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Auction to Benefit Oaxacan Street Children Grassroots

 

Last Sunday Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon posted photos of all the artists who are participating in this incredible project with links to their studios. If you have some time to spare, read about them all and the art they have created for this event.  

By visiting these artists studios online I have not only thoroughly enjoyed their blogs and art, but I have definitely been inspired. It would never have occurred to me to create what they have so I've picked up a lot of ideas. 

As you will see when you visit, the Shrine Gallery of Hope opens on June 1 with bidding starting on June 5. Check it out. 

Postcards From Paradise: Spring Time in Los Angeles

In yesterday's post I described a wonderful outing to the Heritage Square Park Museum in Los Angeles. I posted some photos of the Victorian houses there. I believe with all my heart that California, Los Angeles specifically, is paradise, so here are a few spring time garden shots from Heritage Square. 

  Be sure to enlarge so you can see the honey bees frolicking in the lavender.

Nasturtiums are everywhere I walk these days. 

I don't know the name of this flower. Do you? 

The age-old dance of male and female. I felt like I was back in Kauai. 

To see all of today's Postcards From Paradise, visit Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon. 

A Glimpse of Early Los Angeles at Heritage Square Museum

I was born in Los Angeles and as a kid, my parents drove the few freeways then in place, including what we called the Pasadena Freeway, or 110. It was magical to go through the series of tunnels as you left downtown; we played games like holding our breath through each one, or making a sound that would last through each tunnel, or blowing the horn. The latter became illegal! With the traffic like it is today, you sure couldn’t hold your breath very often. And then there was the narrow little two lane each way freeway through what is called the Arroyo Seco into Pasadena, the home of the Rose Bowl and the Rose Parade and many “rich people’s houses.”

If you Google Arroyo Seco Los Angeles, you will find that means dry stream bed in Spanish. Wikipedia describes it best. 

Sometime in the late 1960s some Victorians from Bunker Hill, Boyle Heights and other parts of the city were relocated next to the freeway in a place called Heritage Square Museum. I’ve driven by this enclave hundreds of times but never took the time to go see what it was. Yesterday one of the women in our group of friends arranged a group tour and 15 of us went to see what was going on. Here are three of the houses.

Heritage Square is billed as a history museum reflecting the settlement and development of Southern California from the Civil War to the early 20th Century. Visitors are given a look into the everyday lives of Southern Californians at the close of the 19th Century. None of us on the tour, many of us natives to L.A., had been here before. 

With funding being what it is these days, the restoration of the eight houses has gone very slowly, but I found the site to be a fascinating step back into local history.  Once enchanted by the notion of living in an old Victorian,  I long ago changed my mind. I was disappointed that none of the upstairs of any of the sites were open. 

How good it was, however, to tour with my old friends, most of them first met more than 40 years ago. Afterwards we went to an excellent restaurant in Pasadena I had never heard of: Technique. It is the signature restaurant of the Los Angeles Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School and it was an incredible dining experience at only $10 for a three-course lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haiku My Heart: The Old Dreamer

From Gourdonstun School's archives of a Shakespeare play. 

Times gone by, she dreams

An old woman now, young still

Behind closed eyes. 

Thanks to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon and her Haiku My Heart Friday challenge. Join us, won't you?