A very quiet New Years....very glad

I'm not much for New Years resolutions.  Pretty much I don't do them except to commit to get through the next year as best I can.  That usually works and I pretty much keep it every year.  In 2012 we finished the barn renovation and the studio is ready for work.  Did these sketches on the road.  We'll see what 2013 brings.

Tinsel time in the old town tonight

The barn is lit up for the season.  I climbed up on the shed roofs and strung the lights without too much difficulty.  I didn't brave the peak.  I'm thinking next year I will.  I love the way it looks like it's had too much wassail and egg nog.

UFO

Well, maybe not unidentified.  Radio tower in Toronto lit up in ever-changing colors.  Was in Toronto again this week and the tower was red and green and fantastic.  I suppose it's fantastic no matter what!

Primary Colors

I think I'll have to get a loaf of Wonder Bread and frame the wrapper and hang it on the kitchen wall.  Oh, no walls. ok.  Coming together....hoping to be done in a week or so.  Painters are here. 

The kitchen cabinets arrived last week.  It may be that the union busters will have their way with Wonder-Bread and Hostess Twinkies and Snowballs, but we will have red, yellow and blue morning noon and evening to make me smile.  Many details to go, but we are nearing the finish line....counters, appliances, electric fixtures, window-trim and paint.  Soon.

Went to see Sir Paul McCartney in Houston this week.  Never saw a Beetle before.  Amazing.  Amazing. Amazing.

Sandy came, and the winds did blow.  A tree fell, knocking the generator on one side, yet when the power went out, the generator started.  A few hours later, another tree, larger much larger than the first fell, and knocked the generator on the other side.  And fell an inch clear of it.  And it kept humming.  For a week until the power came back on.  Lucky day!

Not so lucky for the porti-san.

And they came and took the fallen trees away.  So glad I didn't have to do it.

Jeanne-Claude, Christo - - eat your heart out!

I'm not exactly sure how we wrapped the dumpster in the largest blue tarp in the world, but some climbing on top and some dumpster diving was involved.  I can't move too well right now.  My dumpster diving isn't what it used to be.  

But isn't it amazing?  Jeanne-Claude, Christo, Oui?

Red River, Yellow River, Blue River, Cry me a river

Hurricane Sandy is making its way and we have a dumpster filled to the brim with construction junk.  Can't get it out of her in time for the storm so......we grabbed the big tarp that the construction crew left by the side of the driveway.....

Sheetrock!

Kitchen is coming along...... need to patch the floors, then sand and finish...cabinets....counters...appliances....a few light fixtures.....How the hell are we going to get that couch in there.....damn!

Lucky Day

I was headed to Martha's Vineyard with my son to close the place up for the winter.  He was driving as we were headed up I 95 just before New Haven.  I was focused on the speedometer, since we had a ferry to make and he was driving steadily and cautiously and I figured I'd probably be driving faster.  And I was aware of the tricky lane changes coming up as route 34 veers off one way, and I 91 another, and 95 another so I was focused on his driving.  He was driving steadily at 60  mph, in the center lane.

We were slammed from the right, by a woman in a toyota in dark glasses.   She lost control and hit the accelerator instead of her brake.  Our car swerved to the right.  Some swearing was involved. Oh F...

And then the car swerved to the left.  My son held the car to the road and steered out of the skids.  No one else hit us and he didn't hit anything else.  He managed to get us to the side of the road. And we got out of the car on the passenger side.

The woman pulled over and we called the police.   The state police came in a while and took our statements and issued the report number.  A tow truck came to tow the toyota, which had blown a tire, maybe worse.

Our car had been hit in the rear and all the side and door panels, but looked to be driveable, and my son said he wanted to drive.

And so he climbed into the car from the passenger's side, and drove on.  And we made the ferry in time. No problem.

We got to the house. Put the lawn furniture in the shed and the air-conditioners in the closet. And we went out for hamburgers. Lucky day.

Just how did John Adams get from Boston to New York

The fall has begun, the leaves have only begun to turn, but a few have fallen.  The acreage next door is preserved farmland.  I've heard there's a spot in the north end of central-park, that you can look in any direction and none of the city is apparent.  At the farm-next-door there is no line-of-sight into the 21st century.  How sweet it is.

Nine Windows

The windows are in! Electricity is roughed in.  Gas and H2O are pre-plumbed.  Let there be light. Lux et Veritas.

Kitchen has been gutted....relocated to the basement

Green Geese

Riding the rail

If you can only go to one show this year - - check out Steve Alexander at David Findlay. You've already seen Van Gogh.

I went to Steve Alexander's fine show at the David Findlay Jr Gallery.  This was a great show, really, of very fine paintings.

Here's what you have to like.  The color and light, the vibrations coming off the paintings is fine tuned, and tuned to perfection.  The technique amazes,  never being fussy.  Not a fussy moment in the paintings, which is remarkable given the highly perfected surfaces, created, I think, with screens of squee-geed paint, vales of light and color.  Straight edges which are straight, clean lines between color fields, balanced with painterly edges, a rough-hewn bi-product of the modern production technique.

A great show.

My stolen photos do not do the paintings justice with hot-spots coming from the overhead spots.

Go see the real thing.

A bit of Maine coastline in color and B&W

Took the freight boat

A garden untended

The garden at MV is going crazy.  Our wall of flowers has triumphed over the bamboo curtain next door, though it's fair to say that the bamboo (white flowers), have seeds in proportion to our pink and purple blossoms at a ration of about 1 billion to 300 million, more or less.

Possibly the vine will win out over all.  Never give up, never surrender. (The earth shall reclaim itself). 

Studio loaded up and ready for bear.

The movers came and went.  Best $700 ever spent.  Didn't have to move that damned piano myself! (as if that would have ever happened.  I actually did once move an old upright piano we bought.  Put it in the back of a U-Haul.  When we got it home it had fallen over smack-on-it's back.  (None the worse for wear - - since it wasn't all to fine to begin with !).

 My (actually Marie's) grandmother's chair was too tall for the shelf, so it stood 90 years on the floor. (Is that how the song goes?).

Drawing tables and easel at the ready.

The barn poised on a mid-summer's night waiting to spring to life

 The barn, on an August night, awaiting the flurry of activity that the next day will bring, as the movers haul in the piano, desk, chairs and boxes for the studio upstairs, and work-tables, easel, and drawing table for the studio downstairs.  And grandma's old maroon easy-chair, once so comfortable, now with the springs sprung.

Crazy blooming hydrangea tree in front of the barn.  Moving 'stuff' into the barn next week - - Downstairs:  drawing table and the oldest-stuffed chair in the history of man-kind (any suggestions for what to do about that spring that comes through the back?)  Upstairs:  Piano.  Nic

I am intrigued with the juxtaposition between color and black-and-white.

I know there is a drought.  And so I am happy for the rain. 

 It was raining in Cleveland a few weeks ago. 

 And it was raining in Columbus last week. 

 Sun in Boston.

 

Rain on MV