It’s at least 75 degrees in the greenhouse, when the sun shines.  My aches and pains disappear, and I feel like I am in love.  The florist, born in 1932, is happy I am there.  Blair is painting with me now, too.

Bernard Madoff has gone to jail.  I feel the rumblings of a Tale of Two Cities, my favorite book in the whole world.  I even wrote in to the NYTimes, “off with his head!” but it was likely censored, as it hasn’t shown up in the 500-some comments.     I feel we are dangerously close to a revolution against the new world order.  AIG paying $165million in bonuses adds fuel to the revolutionary fire.

I watched a well-dressed woman cry into the camera on the Internet, and thanked my lucky stars I didn’t save for retirement.  Blair, a 1970s MBA, has never had much confidence in the stock market.  And even back then, in the early days of “management by objectives”, we were told not to invest unless we could afford to lose the money.  When did that philosophy change?

Somehow, people felt it was their god-given right to reap 10 percent gain, and when the money went South, they were “victims”.    What about me?  I accepted the covered casserole dish and the 1% interest the bank had to offer.

Apparently, there are other people who feel as I do, and they wrote in to the New York Times, although their points of view weren’t the editors’ picks.  I wonder how soon  we will realize that investing for high returns means taking high risks?    If you think it’s too good to be true it probably is.

Someone is looking to buy the greenhouses next week.  I am happy I got to paint there as long as I have.  I am building up my stock of paintings for a living and for retirement.   

When Blair and I lived in Seattle, a watercolorist, Mae Weibel, used to come to our door to sell us her paintings.  Blair felt she was lucky, like “Apple Annie”, and we bought paintings of flowers and birds and fruit.  We kept a couple and gave the rest as gifts.  She had that calm French manner and showed us the book of drawings she made when she walked from Paris to the south of France.

Harika can run on the beach without her leash now.    I made the best eggplant parmesan (than you Marcella Hazan) of my life this week.  I saw snowdrops at my sister’s house and  daffodils are about to pop.

Spring sprang sprung.

Laurie and Blair (painting) Pessemier
Geraniums in the Greenhouse   Oil on canvas  20 x 20 inches  $275.00

“Would the kids like to go to the Wadsworth Athenaeum with us?”  I ask my sister.  She takes a minute.  Can we all go?  The six of us sealed the plan to get together in the lobby of the oldest public art museum in the US.

We arrived first, and became engaged in conversation with Mary, who was signing up museum memberships.  We got along like a house afire, talking about her son, an artist just moved to Boston, and her own career, which was taking a new turn in March.  “I think I’ll work until I’m 75”, she said.   

The family arrived and we trekked  through the museum.  The Wadsworth Atheneum has a great collection of this and that.   There are excellent impressionist works, including a couple Toulouse Lautrec’s,   a Mary Cassat and a few Monet.  I am overwhelmed by a Van Gogh portrait, and make a note to try something like it:  he has used a bright yellow green around his visage, painted to look slightly oriental.

I find “Moor offering a parrot to a lady”, the subject of my final graduation paper from art history school.  The vegetable and flower figures by Guiseppe Archimboldo (perhaps school of) hang nearby.  Upstairs are more modern works.

We see the mummy and the sphinx, a collection of glassware, and a new curio room with a painting to be seen through a mirror.  I was intrigued by the description of a current show:   I believed it to be a battle of figurines, the Shooting…at Watou, by Belgian artist  Folkert de Jong     I ask at the desk about the little figurines.

They send me to the third floor, where there is a collection of 2000 miniature vases, made by a Seattle artist.  Next to it is a miniature tower of furniture made from human bones.  I wonder where they got them.  The vases turn out to be my nephew H’s favorite thing in the museum.

“Look,” says Blair, “here’ s the Shooting at Watou, listed on the Xeroxed plan.”  First floor.  A woman guard points out just where.  Blair and my brother-in-law take a spin through the  colonial furniture.  I’ve seen these perfect examples before.  My sister and I and the kids go for the shooting.

I enter the room and the smallest figure is bigger than me.  “Gross!” exclaims H, as he examines the face, a study in melted yellow/gold polyurethane, with little blue Styrofoam teeth.  The artist would be proud.    “I feel like I’m on top a birthday cake,” my sister says.  It’s the pale pink and blue and melted frosting look.   There is one giant figure crouching, dying, in the middle of the room (Goliath).  Wooden arrows are projecting from arms and legs, an eye burned out.  A smaller figure (part ofDavid), aims a gun, grinning with blue teeth.  This is meant to recall a battle between Spain and Netherlands in the Eighty years war.  OK.

We visit the fountain where H and M offer coins and earnest wishes.  M sees his favorite artist’s work:  Jackson Pollock.   At lunch I admit I loved the Shooting at Watou.  But that yellow-green portrait by Van Gogh haunts me.  I pick up twigs from the green around the house, and paint them against that harsh background.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Twigs on a Bright Green Background   LFP  Acrylic on canvas
updated blog:  www.artnotesparis.blogspot.com
AND to watch me paint this picture:   
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGTVueOVY3k&layer_token=a114947f85a8d4ad

Don: I love the new addition of the movie! and the painting..

Thanks for that great info Laurie, that's news I can use, goldsmiths in Ireland, 1500 BC. I'll add to to my color course.
http://www.realcolorwheel.com/final.htm
Do an in page search for Laurie Pessemier to find her quote.

Could you scan a nice piece for me?

I hope you will feel better soon.
Happy Valentine Day. Don

Well it looks like Laurie will be back to her old self soon. That sure makes me happy. Don

"Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk aroun'
Oh hear the word of the Lord"

I got my clavicle fixed this week.  Like driving my broken Buick in for a brake job, we arrived at the Hartford Hospital at 5:30 AM on Tuesday.

I had sworn I'd never have "elective" surgery, but after 8 months of limited arm use, and the prospect of never painting a large work again, I succumbed.

It wasn't just the painting.  Every night since last June, I would be awakened at the moment my non-joined collarbone would collapse into me and pinch me awake.  I couldn't ice skate because a fall would certainly do further damage.  I could't hit the broad side of the bus with a snowball.

With the help of friends, I found a young doctor with a serious success rate.  On the 14 January I went to his office, fully expecting him to tell me what the other doctor had:  that there was still a small chance this would heal, that there were risks to surgery.  But no, he told me if I wanted to use the arm again I'd need to have a bone graft.

I recounted horror stores and he countered them.  I'd need a physical to see if I could withstand the surgery.  OK.

It was a painful procedure, but his assistant laced me with pain pills he described as "top shelf".  They were, and I have weaned myself off them.

Finally, I feel "back together".  It is hard to describe how I felt when the arm bone wasn't connected to the shoulder bone, but it just was not right.   Like a faulty set of Christmas lights, my thoughts would cut out to or from my brain to hand.

I felt an appreciation for how people with a handicap must feel when things just aren't working right.  I wasn't at home in my own body.  I was so busy trying to hold my shoulder up, my brain fell into a dull drone.  Now I have a brilliant sharp shoulder, ready to march into life.

Before  the surgery, I had thought I would need an alternative career to my painting.  I started a reading list to get my masters degree in art history.  Concentrating on art of the middle east and north africa, I learned to read and write the arabic alphabet.  But I found myself making art.

I was cutting letters into paper and making grillwork for our windows.  Orange designs make it took like we are living in the snowy Atlas mountains.

Of course, I have a long way to go.  Physically, I feel better.  I am sleeping through the night, although I have a sore hip, where a large chunk of bone was mined for the repair.  I have a foot long scar from my breastbone to my shoulder.  Old friends tell me Crisco will help it go away:  "you know, like your chicken, when you put it in the oven with grease on top, it all levels out."

In a few weeks I'll be painting, cooking and throwing rocks.  Inshallah. 
Laurie (cutouts and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
"Grillework"  cut out paper 4-1/4 x 4-1/4 inches

We are on that emotional roller coaster known as the Christmas season.  Besides that, it has been six months since our accident, the date our attorney suggested when things would be "settled".  They're not, and there's still 6 millimeters of separation between my broken bits of clavicle.   

We decided to attend a Christmas party this past week, just to get into the swing of things.  We met the hostess on our door-to-door work solicitation program.

One of the toughest parts of being in Connecticut is we have NO friends here, and no old people we trust for advice.  Q up and died on us before we got everything figured out.  My friend S says we're the "geezers" now, but I am not sure.

The party was at an historic bed and breakfast in Old Lyme.  The only people to talk to us were a TV producer and his "commentator" who had laryngitis.  They were held over an extra day until her voice returned.  He didn't know he was speaking to the only people in the entire room that didn't own a TV set.  Blair took his card.

The party took place right next door to the Florence Griswold museum, where artists such as Childe Hassam painted on the walls.  The decorations were exceptional, three big trees;  carolers in traditional dress sang "Lo, how a rose ere blooming".  There were four big gingerbread houses, inspiring us to commit our summer cottage, Hemlock Lodge, to cookie over the weekend.

Luckily we have a candy aficionado in the family.  Henry accompanied us to the store to lay in a supply of red swizzle sticks, peppermints and non pariels.  Gum for the roof.

As I mixed the eggwhites and confectionary sugar I was reminded of cupcakes my mother made for me to bring to a school potluck in the 1960s:  no one ate them.  With cream of tartar (a byproduct of winemaking, believe it or not), I whipped the toothpaste-like material for seven minutes.  Snow.

We didn't make our own gingerbread, but opted for graham crackers.  As Hemlock Lodge perches on a hill, Blair set a few stabilizing posts.  It helps to have an architect present.   Big pretzel sticks served as logs for the 1881 portion of the house.  The lattice work around the porch, and the paned windows were created with  crisscross pretzels.  I mixed in yellow food coloring for the paint finish.

We stopped after an hour or so to allow things to harden up.  This frosting snow is like plaster of Paris.  I dripped it around as icicles.

Next morning, we finished the job.  Our handiwork sits on Henry's kitchen table, awaiting delivery to the proprietors of Hemlock Lodge.  We hope no creatures will be stirring, especially the mice.
Laurie and Blair PESSEMIER
Christmas Architects

It cost HOW MUCH to park in the parking lot?  As we circled the block for the third time, looking for a parking place, Harika and I popped out of the car on West 73rd street.

We went to New York City on Sunday, to deliver a painting.  New York is less than two hours away from our current home, either by car or by train.  Because Harika was accompanying us on this foray, we decided to drive.

The three of us breathed a sigh of relief as we walked with our friends to Central Park.   There were thousands of people, and a tenth as many dogs, walking through falling leaves.   Harika was thrilled to be weaving through so many people, and to make the acquaintance of so many canines.

I am a city person, for certain.  These last months in small town New England have put the vice grips on my imagination.  I found myself making jokes and laughing with our two girlfriends in the city.   Dancers on roller skates, a homeless man with a sign "why lie?  need money for beer", and innumerable photographers lined the sidewalks in the park.

Maybe it's just us, but the whole world seems to have breathed a sigh of relief after the election.  Everyone seems younger, more hopeful.  Or maybe it was just our friends who are, in fact, young enough to be our kids.

The two of them are actresses, although the older has gone back to school for a masters degree in another field.  They made us French toast and we brought champagne for brunch.  There was bacon and strawberries.  We laced the champagne with pomegranate juice.

As we walked home from the park we saw a classic solid copper floor lamp on the street.  The bottom was neatly encased in a garbage bag.  We peaked inside -- it looked good.  We carried it home, plugged it in and nuts, it didn't light.

M and I sat on the couch laughing over Blair and S's antics.  They took off the top of the lamp.  We spoke of catholicism and islam.  They took off the bottom of the lamp.  Harika barked at dogs walking by.  We discussed furniture.  More tools emerged.  With suggestions from the peanut gallery, the lamp was reassembled, plugged in, and Voila.  Light.

We drove back to Branford energized and arrived just as night fell.  I thought of a young woman I met at High Point market a few weeks ago saying, "I am so glad to have traveled the world; I can come back home and see everything from a different perspective."
Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Autumn Color      Acrylic on wood   12 x 12 inches   $150.00