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I'm home from whirlwind visit to family in NY. I was expecting fall to be well underway but when I arrived I was surprised to find Summer frozen in time - the leaves all still green and in place, the sun still strong and hot. When I mentioned it everyone shushed me strongly - they are hanging on to summer tooth and nail. Given the four gorgeous days I had there, it's all understood.

What with all the visiting around there wasn't much time for stitching but I hung a few doors on "Ocean Homes" and took a lot of pictures all over two counties. Hope to get them posted somewhere for the family to share.

Here's my Monet Moment. My family lives close to the vast NYC watershed reservoir system. Large numbers of mute swans congregate on the upper reaches of the reservoirs and winter over there and then spread out to ponds and rivers in the spring and summer. Getting closer shots of these birds involves a level of risk I am no longer interested in. These fuzzy long views will have to do.

September 11

 Later on this day of remembrance and reflection, I will pick up and finish a novel I've been reading, "Stones From the River" by Ursala Hegi.
It's about a community of regular people who allowed their government to fall into the hands of a charismatic leader and his cronies who snake charmed the people into accepting that any problems they were having, as a country and as individuals, were the fault of others in their society.

This government convinced people to  assign blame on "the others"  and while they looked the other way and abdicated responsibility, members of their community began to be arrested for no reason, their homes destroyed and their property confiscated. The country fell into wars with the rest of the world and was ultimately crushed. 

It really dismays me that there are young people today who do not understand the monstrosity of the expression "Holocaust deniers".  I grew up next door to some elderly neighbors who once had numbers forcibly tattooed onto their forearms and that was probably the highlight of that day. From Max and Ethel Rosenberg and a man I worked with, Joe Weiner,  I learned the stories behind those tattoos from the people who lived those lives and they spoke for those who did not live to tell their own tales.

History should not be a mystery. When are humans world wide going to grow up and stop being enslaved by religious and/or political dogma  and the fear and narrow-mindedness that it breeds?  There are so  many other things we could be doing with our passions, energy and resources. Wonderful things.

I had a dream that a very scary looking alien sat at a table with a big industrial sized blender and piles of scrolls, Bibles, Korans and Torahs. With a manic look on his face he began feeding them into the blender along with a few raw fish - was it Dan Acroyd doing Bass-o-matic?- all the while he's describing how these books appeared to be the source of power of the puny humans. Gleefully, he hits the LIQUEFY button for a minute and then chugs the whole mess, wipes his face with a scaly green forearm and strides away shouting "NOW TO CONQUER THE EARTH!".  Was it the burrito I ate for dinner or too much CNN?

cusspots transformed

What is it about containers that compels us so? Little places of safekeeping?  When I was a teenager I would take the train into Manhattan and head for a store called Takashimaya. It was a department store that sold everything under the sun. Looking back it was probably a Japanese version of Walmart. But I was drawn to a department that sold transparent, colored acrylic plastic container. Hard little brilliant jewel colored rectangles and squares of plastic with tight fitting lids. The magpie brain was always overwhelmed and ever covetous.

 As I got older the compulsion switched to baskets which are everywhere in my studio stuffed to the gills and woefully disorganized. When two dimensional design ideas fail me, I take up the crochet hook and some heavy cotton  string and set to my version of basket making. A memory from some former institutional life no doubt. Here we have some pseudo Boston bean pots and a few wild ones complete with tails. (for scale, those are one quart mason jars they are perched on, drying out)

lost cusspots

While I was rummaging around for things to overdye I came across another bunch of cusspots. These are getting the "Boston Bean Pot" treatment and will be left soft. That's it...no more soda ash, cloth or dye....for awhile at least. 



Now to see if  I can get in one or two more swims. It's gotten chilly at night and there's no enough sun on the pool during the day to warm it again and I'm not the hardy, North Atlantic swimmer I used to be.

wild things

Whoever designed the building and landscaping where I work must have been a Mayan in a former life. This is the last leg of a huge zigzig stepway...to nowhere. It ends right at the street so no one ever uses it except the wildlife. We are a short ride to downtown Atlanta and this office park, easily less than half occupied, is fast becoming a wildlife sanctuary. This bed of flowers was alive with butterflies earlier in the day. Last year a family of geese took over the opposite tower and you could not walk down the steps because they would attack defending their territory.

The other night I watched trio of coyotes stride purposefully  through the parking lot. I've seen the odd one as I drive home but it was startling to see this squad together. Tall adult in the lead, two smaller ones watching the flanks as they went. No doubt they are working the overpopulation of  Canadian geese that live here - and the feral cats.  

A very large owl flew right across my path as I was driving out of the park. It's encouraging that  there are plenty of creatures doing well despite what humans do to their surroundings.