Call the Tomato Police!

Just as they ripen to the yummy stage, tomatoes have gone missing from the robust plants at the side of our house. How? Who? 

Now I know because of the evidence left this morning. The possum living under our house is having a night time snack. Score: Possum - 4, Us - 0. 

More Than One Way to...

Joe got tired of the pesky weeds by the alley gate, so he pulled them all out for the last time and built a nice concrete slab this weekend. That'll show them! We put our initials in it, too.

Artistic Melon

My friend and neighbor, Loren, gave me this melon from the farmer's market. She thought I'd like it's lovely patterned skin and I do. Beautiful green and yellow rectangles on a creamy background. Reminds me of a Clyfford Still painting, but not his colors.

It was delicious!

Cy Twombly, Painter of Joy

Cy Twombly died this week at age 83. He was a favorite artist of mine and I am sad to see him go. His work is now done, finite.

Here are some excerpts from his obituary by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times:

Twombly's childlike scribbles and poetic engagement with antiquity left him stubbornly out of step with the movements of postwar American art even as he became one of the era's most important painters.


He once practiced drawing in the dark to make his lines less purposeful, steadfastly follow[ing] his own program...


Twombly said "I have my pace and way of living and I'm not looking for something." Of reputation and artistic acclaim, he added: "It's something I don't think about. If it happens, it happens, but don't bother me with it. I couldn't care less."


Of Twombly's work, Roberta Smith wrote, "Few 20th-century artists corroborated as insistently Schiller's assertion that 'all art is dedicated to joy.'

Cy Twombly, in front of his work

Where I Spent The Day

Drawing Table in My Studio

Happy Birthday, Nation!

Two Great Reads

My recent flights just flew by, so to speak, because of two very good books, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a novel, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a combination science/human interest true story. I recommend them highly!

Tornado Aftermath, Six Weeks Later

I've just returned from a visit to the midwest. Happy to see my parents doing well; good to catch up with family.

I was in tiny, wonderful Oswego, Kansas last week. Oswego is fifty miles away from Joplin, Missouri. You may recall all the news reports when a tornado ravaged that town six weeks ago. We drove over to Joplin one day to see the damage. It is almost unimaginable: a wide area of neighborhoods totally flattened; a huge hospital destroyed; commercial areas wiped out; miles of leafy, mature trees gone. Even now, despite massive clean up efforts, an eery pall prevails. Here are some pictures of what used to be a thriving community.