"Write your dog's name, and your name on this card," a woman instructed, "give it to him when it is your turn."  I wrote "Harika" and my name.  Blair was off finding the camera to help recall this funny scene.

The Branford town green was resplendent with dogs, cats, gerbils, horses and a pony.  The cat rescue team was handing out literature for the spay clinic.  Did you know an unspayed cat could generate up to 2 million kittens in 8 years?

My sister, brother-in-law and two boys had come for Sunday dinner; afterward we checked out the doings in town.  A few weeks earlier, the Episcopal minister had spotted us performing Harika's early morning ablutions:  "bring that dog by on October 5 for the blessing", he commanded.  It had slipped our mind until we saw the banner in town for "Animal Appreciation Day".

Life chugs along here for us in Connecticut.  Blair's project to renovate the small hotel has expanded, and because I still can't us my right side, my job has vanished.  We are going to be showing our artwork with our old friends at Ardley Hall at High Point Market, so we are busy painting (not yet an easy feat for me).

After the blessing (Harika was not impressed, but I think it did no harm), we headed out to the trolley trail.  The trail is reclaimed space, since the trolley has been replaced with heavy rail.  The trail runs through marsh land.  We hopped off the boardwalk to pick up a fiddler crab, who brandished his big white claw at Henry.    A path through the tall marsh grass led to an apparent hobo encampment.  The train passed very close by.

We pass other walkers, joggers and dogs on the trail.  There is a swing which, at it's apex, allows a panoramic view of the Long Island Sound.  The swing, and the land it sits on, was donated by an artist (deceased) who formerly taught at Yale.  His house, a mishmash of styles and decorations, sits at the gateway to the park.   I guess it will be left up to us to leave the next artist legacy.


Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
"Harika in the grass"  Acrylic on canvas  11 x 14 inches

"So, I wish I had better news for you in terms of a possible position, but I hope to hear more of you someday in terms of the art world."

I have been applying for jobs recently, and have received some of the loveliest rejection letters.  The above was one for an assistant editor position with a trade journal.   I try to apply for a couple of jobs a day, make a few calls for design work, and paint.  I am readapting to being in America, where it looks like we'll stay for a few more months.

At the beach this last week, the fishermen have been catching blue fish.  On Thursday morning last, the line fishermen had caught over 100 specimen.  I felt sorry for the fish, who were jumping right out of the water.  No sooner than a line would be cast, another fish was pulled in.

Early mornings, Blair, Harika and I go to the shore to paint.  Sunny and breezy, it's possible to get a canvas in before 10.  The Connecticut shore is famous for its beautiful light:  a whole group of American Impressionists bore testament to that at the turn of the last century.

Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf and many others came up to Old Lyme (just a stone's throw from here) to stay at Florence Griswold's boarding house and paint.  And paint they did, from canvas to the walls and doors.  A lintel boasts a seaside scene, a door panel holds a portrait.  This is now the Florence Griswold museum.

"Feel free to apply for future openings as your interests seem to be a good fit for the museum environment."  my letter from them reads: I was a day late with my application.

We went to Stony Brook on Sunday, to paint, and take Harika for a walk.  From this arm of Branford, you can see the Thimble Islands -- tiny outcroppings from the sea, each bearing a single house.    There is a tourist ferry which will carries passengers by each one.   I tie Harika, our 23 pound terrier, to my leg as I paint from the shore.  Blair is beneath the gazebo, painting quaint New England seaside architecture.

I've not yet heard on my application for breakfast and lunch chef at the private school, or designer at the Home Depot.  But I have really enjoyed applying for these jobs.  It is something I could never do in Paris, never having earned the right to WORK.

"I have no doubt that you would be very competent at whatever you did, but I have to say that if I had your artistic talent, I would quit (this job) tomorrow and devote myself to that pursuit/life.." 


Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
"Thimble Island"  Acrylic on canvas 12 x 12 inches $150.00

Q, fellow traveler of artnotes fame (father of the late Blackie), has made the ultimate journey:  our dear friend passed away on Friday.

He shared his secret to a happy life with us over quenelles and Pouilly-Fume; duck breast and pommes sarladaises; salmon souffle in a three star restaurant.  He could pick the best dish on any menu, and the appropriate wine to accompany it.  A thrifty man in daily life, his pocketbook knew no bounds when it came to a three hour meal.  He taught us to enjoy food and travel and life.

I feel a rock has been pulled out from the beach floor beneath me. As the hours go by, new experiences rush in to fill the void, wave after wave bringing new material from which to form a foundation.

I made an especially good risotto Milanese on Friday night, thanks to a surprise package of fine Iranian saffron from Persian friends.  Summer guests had left us a bottle of Prosecco, with which we toasted "life".

Another box of household goods arrived the same day from a friend in Florida:  a salt shaker resembling Harika among the goodies.  I was grateful for the timeliness.

Harika and I make the Herculaneum walk to the fruit stand on Saturday to buy an heirloom tomato.  It is only a mile, but a mile with a one-year-old dog in a new town can take 30 minutes.  It is a beautiful stand, alongside the marsh and inlet to the sea.  Old barns and tents, a wizened family with a big dog sit around with tiki torches warding off the mosquitoes.

"Is your dog a schnauzer?" one woman asks.  "No, she's a mix," I reply.  "Where did you get her?"  I pause.  "North Africa."
"What were you doing there?" a man asks.  Pause again -- I never know how people will react.  "Painting."  "Do you give painting lessons?"  Sometimes.  Will you teach me to paint? 

I am struck with the surprise and newness of every minute.  What is new?  not a car, not a building, but our own experience each minute.   Like the sea, the newness is unrelenting, knocking down and building up simultaneously.

We visited a friend in the Catskills this week.  We first met him in Seattle, where he helped us formulate our plan to move to Paris in 1998.  Paris seems very far away at the moment, and he has since moved to China.  We drive 2-1/2 hours to his home in the mountains, and break bread together at 3000 feet, in a field surrounded by trees.  It is cold, even thought it is still August.  We barbecue chicken and look at the stars, and talk about friendship.

Laurie (text)  and Blair (painting) PESSEMIER
"Recalling Paris"  MBP, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches   $875.00

The thing I am most struck with on my return to America is the number of tattoos.  "It's because of breakfast you say that," Blair tells me.  We've been walking over to the "Common Grounds" coffee shop each morning with Harika -- a number of bikers congregate there at 7 AM.  Harika loves them, especially Eddy who has a broken leg.  I tell him about Harika's leg, "Stainless steel in there...".  They are big and tough, and she reduces them to baby talk.

We're living in Branford, Connecticut, something I tell myself over and over again. It's very beautiful:  a big green in the center of town, and the beach and Thimble Islands just a short step away.  White houses with neat lawns, wide sidewalks and cars that stop to let us all cross the road.  We are very lucky to know someone here, who will rent us an apartment with our dog, and "no tradelines", as the bank puts it.

The library won't give me a card here.  "Your papers just aren't right", Marion the librarian hisses between thin, tightlips.  "Don't you have a car or a cable bill in your OWN name?".  "No," I tell her, "Blair is my husband.  It's not like there are any other Pessemiers living in Branford."  What does she think?  I am going to read without the right?   She tries to keep my Harwinton, CT library card, but I reach over the desk and take it back from her.

We are here to build a business -- make a few dollars, so we can continue the lifestyle to which we are accustomed.  It is more expensive than we'd imagined.   Coffee is 1.95 a cup; if I want espresso, it's 2.35 -- nearly twice the price of Paris.  I try to justify the cost of visiting with live humans against the lesser cost of coffee at home.  Here in the US, it is best to buy everything over the Internet, but I want to open the paint tube, in front of the tattooed clerk.

I love being able to walk to the grocery, the coffee shop.  Lost of folks stop to talk.  There are two ice cream stands nearby, an Indian restaurant, a French restaurant, and several other eating establishments.  Hairdressers and spas, real estate offices and banks are well represented.  Churches, too -- three within a block of us; dogs galore.    I spoke to a man with a Bichon named Topsy, and with the mother of Lily, a West Highland Terrier.  They are eccentric, in a land of sameness.  I am momentarily put at ease.  Soul is what I seek:  I want to feel the interior make-up of the people I meet -- their meat.

It's never occurred to me to get a tattoo -- I don't even have pierced ears.  I ignore my body, my appearance, as much as possible.  I am fascinated looking at others.

I've been reading a new book about Marco Polo, my hero:  a traveling salesman with a penchant for the exotic.  He spent nearly twenty years in China, and then voyaged back to Venice.  He wasn't really happy about returning, but with the death of Kubla Khan, he had no alternative.  Nothing ever measured up again to that experience.   He wrote, in a Genoa prison, about his adventures.  Nobody believed him.  He died a bitter penny pincher, although he was rich.

Today we went to the beach in New Haven, with its Mexican food stands, and extended Spanish families.  Harika forged the waters of Long Island Sound up to her neck; I waded with her (we need a sticker for the Branford Beach -- after my experience at the library I couldn't face another rejection).  We bought Indian-boil-in-bag dinners in West Haven, and visited about Vancouver, BC, with the Vietnamese man installing our granite counter tops.  One of the things I like most about America is it's diversity, its collective soul.  Marco Polo might have been happy here.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
View at the Marsh    LFP   Acrylic on wood  5 x 18 inches  $125.00
address:
Pessemier
69 South Main St.
Branford, CT  06405

After just two innings of the Harwinton-Torrington final baseball game of the season, the skies opened up.  As my nephew stepped up to bat for the Harwinton team, the game was called on account of rain.  It was a hard game to watch.  When my Harwinton nephew got up to bat, we’d sit on the on the his side.  When the Torrington nephew got up to bat, we'd switch to the other bleachers.  I hate picking sides.



The game resumed the next day.   I took Harika for a walk around the outskirts of the field.  She raced through poison ivy and then dug a hole.  The game was held at the Harwinton Fairgrounds.  It was a beautiful setting with broad fenced pastures and  large deciduous trees in full leaf.  I got two horsefly bites, but awoke the next morning poison ivy free.



When I have to pick sides, I tend to avoid the situation.  I've always hated that someone had to lose.  I could always see the other guy's point of view.  I am a good art historian -- I can put myself in the shoes of the artist to understand why he painted something a certain way.  I appreciate, without exactly liking, the artwork.



I like baseball, just for the game--I never care who wins.  It's the beauty that intrigues me:  the green grass; the red dirt diamond; the ump dusting off home plate; the effort the pitcher puts in to psych-out a batter: sweat.  I like to watch the fielders converge on a fly ball and the snap of the baseball on the glove.  Like my other nephew, who wasn't playing, I like visiting with the folks at the snack shack.



I've never been able to pick sides.   In Tunisia, I never hung with the Americans, nor the French, nor even the Tunisians.  I was interested in everyone's point of view and  how they acted in relation to each other.   What might have been obvious in Winsted wasn't necessarily so in La Marsa, Tunisia or Trouville, France.



On Sunday morning here the radio station plays hallelujah music; in the middle of the afternoon Louis Farrakhan reads from Islam.  It's marvelous that people in the same city listen to that same radio station and accept those two opposing views.  It was this Springfield, Massachusetts radio station, WTTC, that inspired me to set out to France.  “I will not be careful anymore."  That statement set my life in motion.



My Torrington nephew arrived at first base, where my Harwinton nephew played.  My Harwinton nephew smiled when he saw his cousin, and I knew right then who would win this game.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Picking Flowers    acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 (left handseries)

"How about some Jimi Hendrix?"  A middle-aged man in a flush of youthful enthusiasm was carrying speakers up the soldiers monument tower in Winsted Connecticut.  The comment wasn't without precedent--the "Welcome to Winsted" sign bore the graffiti "remember Jimi Hendrix".

Yesterday, Blair and I and Harika were out looking for the heart of Independence Day.  We made a revolutionary site ourselves: me with my sling, Blair with his game leg, and our dog hopping along on her 3 good legs.  The day was cool and overcast and we exited  from a picnic. 

At 3:30 PM, I recalled the sign: soldiers monument, open from two until four on fourth of July.  The Soldiers Monument sits atop a hill in Winsted.  Not far from the high school, we would skip out of school to smoke, listen to music and feign study, with a view.

I'd been thinking about Jimi Hendrix as my ten-year-old nephew takes up the electric guitar.  At the Harwinton library, I searched for his music in vain, coming away instead with the score of  my favorite American musical, the Music Man (a Juy 4th story which includes the later Beatles' hit "Til there was you")

This fellow guarding the monument: said he'd originally come up here from Gilbert high school to study for exams.  Today he was keeping the monument open for visitors.  "There's about six of us," he explained, "that preserve the monument".  They had a few visitors today, but with the impending rain he was nervous about the music.

"We'll sit down here and tell you how it sounds," we offered.  At a  concrete picnic table, Blair and I discussed the surroundings -- flags and an odd newish fountain, non-operational.  The fountain has a certain crescent moon look imparting the feeling of a mosque to the tower --  I'm sure that's not what the city fathers had in mind.   After about 15 minutes, a short shrift of the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" rang  out.  "It's working!" we shouted.

He changed the music to the Battle hymn of the Republic.  The bronze soldier atop the monument looked proud.  Inside the monument, cut into stone are the names of the soldiers from the area lost in the Civil War.

I find it amazing that in the North we have very few Civil War monuments,  but in the South they abound.  There's a certain cynicism about everything in the state of Connecticut, disguised as dry humor..  We are rarely proud of anything here, and compliments are scarce as hen's teeth.

"The Soldier's Monument will be open on Labor Day," the man tells us, and we may even offer lemonade.  Blair suggests we bring it.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair Pessemier
Blue wildfowers on dark and light backgrounds   5 x 45 inches each   acrylic on pine
These are part of the left hand series -- not updated on the blog.

A LEFT HANDED PAINTING BY A RIGHT HANDED PERSON.
Nice going, I'm sorry about that stupid SUV. That guy probably didn't even get hurt. And they are still making more of them, with better mileage. I hate 'em.. and the buyers. He was probably drunk. Smoke pot and drive safer and slower. You can tell I'm mad. Get well soon.

REFRESHING