St. Francis of the Snowmaggedon!

Yup! That him. The lump in the middle of the snow field.

Here We Go Again!

With temps that were above freezing at first, the snow that started falling at 11 AM, didn't start sticking until 1 PM and not to the roads until about 3 PM. Here at 8:30, I have about 5" and the pace is steady. Around 11 PM it's supposed to crank up to an average pace of 2" per hour, possible 3" with certain bands of heavier snow. This will continue for around 10 hours, before moderating. Then it will continue to snow throughout tomorrow for an additional 5" to 7" before ending. A grand total of 16" to 24" has been replaced by a 20" to 30" inch range. Only time will tell.

Here's a night shot of my St. Francis statue. The old boy is donning quite a mantle and miter! If all the predictions come to pass, he should end up a lump on the blanket of white that will cover the yard. The december storm left him buried to his neck and I recorded a total snowfall here then of 19". Keeping in mind that last Saturday we got 8" and this past Tuesday 5".

Midweek Funny

Prelude To A Kiss

This from the people at "Love, Simply," a coalition of groups representing youth, students, and LGBT people in France. The box reads: "We who are lesbian, gay, bi, trans, straight...we are always different when we love." The campaign for tolerance was launched to coincide with St. Valentine's Day.

Their website can be found at "http://www.aimer-simplement.org/"

A Helping Paw?

Art I'm Seeing #43

After admiring the snow covered trees and full of anticipation over the cancellation of school today, I drove into D.C. and paid a visit to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. They are currently featuring an exhibition of paintings from the National Museum Wales in the U.K. The show is called "Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection". The Davies were a pair of wealthy sisters who never married and instead gave into their love of art by collecting it: a Welsh Cone Sister thing if you will (The Cone collection was amassed by two sisters similarly possessed and his house at the Baltimore Museum of Art).

Among the works on display are several by Turner, Daumier, and Millet. There are a couple by Manet, Monet, Renoir and Cezanne. Altogether works by 30 different artists are included in the space of 3 ample galleries. My first impressions include a couple of stand out works and a couple of gentle, lovely works. I'll start with the gentle, lovely works. The small collection of Turner watercolors are luminous and perfectly understated in just that way that demonstrates what a master of that medium he was, even as it foreshadows the impressionist works to follow. There is a Bonnard of a little villa with a garden. Not an in your face painting by any means, but a just right example of his palette and the way he organizes a composition to feature the architecture and flora while loosing a person or two within the mix as if they were but a ghost, a spirit both present and somehow without the moment.

The two standouts were by Millet and Van Gogh. The Millet was entitled "The Gust Of Wind" and featured a tree being ripped apart and nearly from the ground by the "gust". Seemingly beneath it stands a man whose back if bowed against the wind and still appears to nearly be stretched out of his own skin by the force. Beyond him the far horizon forms a tent of light like a bubble over him: almost a forcefield of divine protection. Talk about your romance with the sublime! The work was so electric it was like Viagra for my inner artist.

And then there was this amazing Van Gogh.
It was painted very near to the artist's suicide. It's title is simply "Rain Auvers." It is not his last painting, but it references that work with both it's inclusion of the wheat fields and more specifically the black birds. The moment I saw them, I knew it was from that final early summer when Vincent was newly freed from the asylum, painting manically, and moving inextricably toward his self-inflicted demise. Had I not even held my knowledge of the artist so that these associations were evoked like the very air around me, I do believe I would have still understood the growing melancholy that was rising in Van Gogh's heart like the crow crossing the hedgerow in the rain.

This work has never before been exhibited in the United States. To see it is worth the price of admission alone. Having seen it, I will return to see it again. The exhibition is open to the public through April 25th; however, the Corocoran is closed on both Monday's and Tuesday's as you plan your visit.

And as a sort of "p.s." there were also a few honorable mentions worth mentioning! "Castle Gandolfo, Dancing Tyrolean Shepherds by Lake Albano," by Corot, "Winter: The Faggot Gatherers" by Millet, and "Innocents and Card Sharpers" by Meissonier. Three more reasons to return!

Winter Wonderland

From the middle of night.


Early morning backyard.











The sun arrives to gild and melt.











The ancient maple in my front yard cradles the morning.

















Blue skies over snow wrapped trees.

The Supremes

Brought to you by the good people at Proctor & Gamble, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, in conjunction with Conoco/Exxon/Mobil/Dutch Royal Shell group who's parent company PepsiCO would like to acknowledge the clandestine affiliation with McDonald's international under the auspices of Coca Cola and United Health Care/Humana/Blue Cross-Blue Shield, industrial puppet of Pfizer/GlaxoSmithKline/Roche/Novartis/AstraZeneca/Merck/Eli Lily Inc. America, it's a new beginning.

MUSIC

I can't imagine a world without music. I once had a roommate in college who chided me for the prevalence of music in my life. It was my first realization of just how around me I surround myself with music.

10 Songs that have Rocked and Defined my world.

And I Love You So written by Don McLean
Bridge Over Troubled Waters written by Art Garfunkel and Paul Simons
I Wonder As I Wander written by John Jacob Niles
Imagine written by John Lennon
Just As I Am written by Charles Wesley
Let It Be written by Paul McCartney
Smile written by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons
Somewhere Over The Rainbow written by E. Yip Harpburg
We Shall Overcome written by Charles Tindley
You Are My Sunshine written by Jim Davis and Charles Mitchell

Do you have 10? Love to have you share them with me.

Random Quote #110

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -- Anais Nin, 1903 - 1977

Today's Sermon #22

BECAUSE I COULD NOT STOP FOR DEATH

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played
At wrestling in a ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then ’t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.

~ Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886

This evening I'm listening yet again to the Hope For Haiti Now concert and realizing just how transcendent and important it is to keep this moment alive in my heart. It is the only way it will change me.

Marriage is a Civil Right

The church can bless whomever they want. Who really cares anymore? The meat of Marriage is in the civil rights and responsibilities it conveys. The Iowa State Supreme Court gets this. The Legislatures of New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont get it. The City Council of Washington, D. C. gets it. Even the Coquille American Indian Tribe in Oregon gets it.

When will the majority of men and women of goodwill finally come to get it? What will it take? A tragedy and travesty like this one in Missouri?

What does it matter to anyone anywhere who anyone anywhere marries? Who among us knows with certainty the status of all of our neighbors, cares one way or the other, or is in any way harmed by this?

To me, the whole thing is just a way for some small minded people to wheeled power over others. And the pretense that somehow such acts of love and commitment would offend or anger God only demonstrate how backward and ignorant some people still are when it comes to God. Rather than a rallying point, such views should be seen as pitiable at best and blasphemous at worse. For a fallen, corruptible, finite being to spit in the face of a God who is marketed as having unconditional love and demonstrating grace (which is by definition forgiving beyond natural human limits) is simply such a contradiction in terms as to be patently atheistic on its face.

Either God is or isn't. You can't tell the world that God is a God of unconditional love and then support a theology of rules and systems that have limits and end.

Yet, here we are. And here those religious among us remain to support and rejoice in injustices like this one in Missouri.

What I'm Listening to #77: Help Haiti Now!

You can buy this album from itunes or on Amazon. com and in doing so, you give to the relief of the suffering of the people of Haiti. The music is at times haunting, at times uplifting, throughout amazing. Come on people, let's just do this.

Hedgehogs

Are just so damn cute!

What I'm Watching #228

I can't remember when I started watching Law & Order. And if you watch TV at all, you're likely to run into some aspect of the show somewhere. But I love it. It's a great concept and the cast and stories have been consistently compelling for nearly 20 seasons.

I just got the recently released seventh season of the show. While the franchise releases it's other series, (Law & Order CI, Law & Order SVU, and Law & Order Trial By Jury) like popcorn as quickly as they can get them there, they've been very judicious with the original series. Before now, the series has only been available in seasons 1-6 and 14. Season 14 was released out of order as an homage to the actor Jerry Orbach after he died in 2004.

Watching it all the time on the TNT network, I bought this season fully expecting just to have it for my leisure. Imagine my delight to discover that of the first 5 episodes, 3 were brand new to me.

The seventh season was the first for actor Carey Lowell as ADA Jamie Ross. She joined the cast with Benjamin Bratt, S. Epatha Merkerson, Steven Hill, Sam Waterson, and Jerry. The first five episodes of the seventh season include amazing performances by guest actors like Pamela Gray, Karen Allen, Michael Willis, and Jeff Edwards, as well as, one of my all time favorite little cameo spots by Lynn Cohen as the Countess of Alto-Perugia. She made me laugh.

As a child I was trained upon the likes of Cannon, Kojak, Columbo, McCloud, McMillan & Wife, The Snoop Sisters, The Rockford Files, Barnaby Jones, and before that it was Mannix, Ironsides, Hawaii 5-O, and Mission: Impossible. I gave up TV in the 80's and much of the 90's. It was a cop show that brought me back: Homocide: Life on the Street. And perhaps it was it's demise that led me to discover Law & Order. Everyone is entitled to their opium. Hooked as a kid, I still need my fix. What can I say? There are worse things a guy can do!

What I'm Drinking

I have a new love! Paldo is a Korean company and this drink made with aloe vera and pome- granate. Low carb. Full of little chunks of aloe. It's delicious!

"Hesher"

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars in the dramedy "Hesher" from the director Spencer Susser, who, after directing a variety of commercials and music videos, makes his feature directorial debut at Sundance. Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come so far from "Third Rock From The Sun" on TV, that it really amazes me. I love this actor.

"Howl!"

The 2010 Sundance Film Festival runs from Jan. 21-31 and opens with the Allen Ginsberg biopic "Howl," with Aaron Tveit and James Franco. Looks like a another must see film in the new year.

Advice Is Free

A great moment of clarity from John Mayer in Rolling Stone magazine. Tiger, are you listening?

"I have masturbated myself out of serious problems in my life. The phone doesn’t pick up because I’m masturbating. And I have excused myself at the oddest times so as to not make mistakes. If Tiger Woods only knew when to jerk off. It has a true market value, like gold bullion. ....I do it because I want to take a brain bath. It’s like a hot whirlpool for my brain, in a brain space that is 100 percent agreeable with itself.”

Same Sex Families

This is another wonderful article from the New York Times. I guess I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and pay for the online version when it comes to that...it's certainly been a good run free, my turn to step up to the plate.

Check it out at: