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Laurie USA 10 of 10 (Read 12297 times)
Reply #11 - Nov 14th, 2012 at 10:41am

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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
 
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Reply #10 - Mar 15th, 2009 at 7:01pm

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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
 
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Reply #9 - Mar 8th, 2009 at 7:46am

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“I painted my dog twice yesterday,” I told the man in response to his question about my art.  “What color did you paint him?” was his retort.  He wrapped my purchases in clear cellophane.

I currently live in a place without flowers.  This is my first winter since 1979 without ranunculas or anemones, primroses or pansies.  On Tuesday, I took matters in hand, and set out to buy some color.  The Home Depot, where I’d hoped to find amaryllis or paperwhites had only overpriced orchids.  The two florists in Branford were host to real and fake blooms, the former being the more faded.  I fear the two prey on the dead, funeral work being paramount.  One store’s door was locked, despite being “open”.  I gave up until Wednesday.

Then I remembered the nursery near Tweed Airport in East Haven, Connecticut.  We’d driven by and commented on the geraniums in the greenhouse.  I parked the car and entered the steamy shop.  The proprietor and a customer were engrossed in a heated debate over Connecticut, our governor and the stimulus package.  I saw this as license to look around.

The fragrance of white cyclamen drew me into a little greenhouse adjoining the shop.  I stuck my nose into all the plants – the red less fragrant, if at all, but certainly the most brilliant and beautiful.  There were all sorts of plants on shelves and tables, water dripping from the steamy ceiling.  My favorite plants were those pushing through the brick floor, nearly transparent, feathery green leaves.  I selected a cyclamen in primary magenta and brought it to the counter.

The place was a ramshackle mess, an elderly relative looking puzzled in the back.   The sharp featured owner began to wrap my purchase, as I noticed the entry to the bigger greenhouse behind the counter.  “May I?”  
“Of course, the place is yours, all of it” he responded, with an air of sadness.

The room opened to overblown poinsettia, one a 6 foot tree on a single trunk, another  with white leaves more lush than one could imagine in a hothouse plant.   An occasional azalea, then a sea of pink geranium.  “No reds,” he surprised me from behind, “what was I thinking?  Will I ever sell all these pinks?”

Coral, deep magenta, rose, light purple, peach:  all shades of pink, so vivid they seemed edible.  I’d pick one up only to change it for another.  Finally, I picked a true pink, with red spots on the petals.

I told him these flowers were to paint, no need for fancy wrapping.  I got a bow, nonetheless.  

“That’s what I wanted to do,” he said, “not paint, but buy and sell art.  That was before this greenhouse.”  He gave me an art tour of the shop and offices – he had some great original paintings and woodcuts.

In Paris, the American Church had a program called “bloom where you’re planted”.  I could never understand why anyone wouldn’t bloom in a city like Paris.   As Blair and I look at other places to live out this recession:  Rio de Janiero, Sousse, Sicily or Seville, I realize how much I don’t want to move again.

I picked up my plants.  “Come back and paint in the greenhouse,” he invited, “anytime!”

Laurie (paintings and text) and Blair PESSEMIER

Flowers   (8) 6 x 20 inches  acrylic on wood   $100.00 each

.....................
 

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Reply #8 - Feb 28th, 2009 at 11:27pm

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“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..
 
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Reply #7 - Feb 24th, 2009 at 1:10am

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Overcome with the urge to DO things, we drove to New London, Connecticut on Thursday.  Halfway, we stop at Harika’s favorite beach:  Hammonassett.  It was a blustery day with big waves and big sun.  We ran through the bushes in pursuit of invisible rabbits.  There’s evidence of them, but nary a cottontail to be seen.

I intended to paint, but even though it looked warm, it wasn’t.  After forty minutes we piled back into the car and drove east.

Blair and I have always liked New London.  It is a sailing sort of town, home to the Coast Guard Academy and the ferry terminal for Block and Fisher’s Islands.   Electric Boat, the US submarine factory is on the other side of the “Thames” river in Groton.    We almost bought a house in New London in 1995, but went back to Seattle and later to Paris.  Good choice.

New London is a town of solid brick buildings.   We go to lunch in one, first floor, a 24 seat restaurant, serving French food from the Magreb and India.  Vegetarian fare, with a sophisticated crowd of middle aged women.  I envy the thought of having a lunch place – the spice here was a bit heavy-handed, but obviously well received.

We walked down State street, to Bank street, with Harika in tow, or conversely, in pull.  We were looking for a serving platter, and found it at a big junk/antique store.  “What will you put in this dish?” the proprietrice inquired.   “Cornish game hens in the Moroccan style”,  I confessed, “although I’d rather be using squab.”   She told me how her mother made friends with a neighbor (from North Africa) that raised pigeons.  Her mother, Italian, used to cook them.  This is the time of year the pigeons begin their migration from Africa up through France.

Like Harika,  I am in hot pursuit of my own rabbit:  what to do with my life.  I am a firm believer that if I don’t take a decisive route,  negative forces will push me in a bad direction.   Evasion is another tactic:  fate can’t find me in the desert.

There’s a great commercial building for sale in New London.  I can imagine a coffee shop or antique store, or  maybe an art school, with living quarters upstairs.    The sea at our doorstep, ships sound their horns as they pull out of the harbor.    How long would it be before we were on one?

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER

Lemon yellow, magenta napkin and white platter     LFP  Acrylic on wood   12 x 7 inches  $75.00
 
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Reply #6 - Feb 15th, 2009 at 12:07am

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Makawao,  Maui, USA, HI

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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
 
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Reply #5 - Feb 15th, 2009 at 12:04am

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We experienced this week what my father calls the "jen-oo-airy thaw" -- a few days of above freezing weather when the birds sing in the early morning.

We were out at 6:30 AM Tuesday with our Tunisian bird, Harika.  We saw Mike, the lobster man, waiting for the bus.  He spotted "Eureka", who he adores, and the two had a mutual admiration session.  Mike suggests Harika get together with Quincy, his dog-wolf.  We'll think it over.

It's light out now at 6:30 here.  Not quite sunrise, the big snow moon hanging in the sky until 7:00.  It stays light out later as well -- there is still full light near the beach at 5:30 PM.  This is the first year Blair and I have spent a winter in Connecticut in more than ten years.  We have enjoyed the stark landscape and changing light.

Mike  runs "Thimble Island Lobster" from his garage.  "I've got tons of orders for Valentine's Day", he gushes.  But today he's off to Saltonstall pond to search for arrowheads.  He found two flint arrowheads there the other day -- the archeologist said they were traded from a New York or Pennsylvania tribe.

He notices I am favoring my right side.  "Bone graft," I explain.   He shows me one he had in his wrist.  "I don't even have pain in bad weather now," he says.   He's surprised I only spent an overnight in hospital.  Mike figures we're really tough, coming from Seattle.  Fishermen on the East Coast live in awe of Northwest fishermen.  Mike actually fished in Alaska for awhile, so he knows.

Mike is a rugged yet gentle guy.    In addition to arrowheads, today he's looking for antlers (the deer have already shed them, he tells us), birds, and the little fish around the edge of the ice.  Mike is just about the only person in Branford without a hidden itinerary:  he likes us for who we are, not for where we've been or what we can do for him.

Mike is an expert on the Indian civilization in Connecticut.  Like me, he is not so keen on Western civilization and its results. 

Blair and I discovered a marvelous used bookstore this week:  the Book Barn in Niantic.  Multiple outbuildings housing various subjects surround a large barn full of books:  we select a volume on Irish metal work from 1500 BC.  Can you believe in Ireland they were making sophisticated gold objects in 1500 BC?   In fact, there is a big difference between what was produced in Eastern and Western Ireland.  This sort of thing doesn't fit neatly into our concept of Western civilization. 

We continue on our early morning  walk, reacquainting with lost gloves revealed by melting snows.  Later, we'll head out to the beach, where the gulls stand lined up on the shore, in the direction of the wind.   Harika will run without her leash, while Blair and I search for signs of spring..


Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Tree outside the window     LFP  Acrylic on canvas   11 x 14 inches $175.00
 
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Reply #4 - Feb 9th, 2009 at 10:52pm

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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
 
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Reply #3 - Jan 13th, 2009 at 3:53am

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Since the start of December, I have found more than ten pencils on the street.  I pick them up, put them in my jacket pocket -- when I put my hand in there I realize I should be writing more.

This treasure trove is not just limited to pencils.  After the lighting of the Christmas tree I found a brown velvet scarf.  Later, a pair of suede gloves  Today I found a shirt I am not sure will fit me, but I'll wash it and try it on. Unlike Harika, I never pick up anything edible.

These gifts from the universe are just one of the many things I've found because of Harika.  I learn from her on a daily basis.

I've learned a lot this last year: sitting around knitting, literally and figuratively, can do that.

One day as I was knitting I realized how foolish it was to reprimand (yell at) annoying humans or dogs.   I came about his revelation because everyone in Connecticut seems to yell.  It doesn't work.  It raises my blood pressure and annoys the yellee.  Maybe I should just stop trying to control things.

Harika greets everyone with a wag of the tail and a heartfelt  gaze.  And, if they don't respond, she just goes on to the next human.  She doesn't dwell on who doesn't like her and why.

She doesn't try to change herself.  Imagine that.  I am constantly making resolutions to make myself a new person.  I regularly exclaim, "I am going to be a new person from now on."  It's ridiculous.

That said, I have three New Year's resolutions:  think and speak positively (no complaining); have a purpose in life; be happy in the present and finally (ok, four), identify with the feeling and experience, not the place.  [I am trying to accept Connecticut].

Harika loves cold weather, and relishes a walk even if it's freezing outside.  She'll crash through the ice to walk in a puddle.  She feels equally good about the summer.  She never listens to the weather report.  I step, reluctantly, out the door, anticipating 23 degrees farenheit.

Harika responds at once to all emergencies.  Bark, and sort it out later.  A lick on the hand makes up for mistaken identity.  She respects superstition.  If it doesn't seem right, it probably isn't, no matter what the reason.   If they keep  banging on the pipes downstairs, perhaps the house will fall down.

She'll accept kindness, no matter where it comes from.   She does not discriminate on the basis of gender, color or creed.  She does avoid certain people, whom I suspect of cruelty to dogs.  She loves all the people who attend AA and smoke outside the Baptist church basement.  In fact she likes everyone at the Baptist church, especially the stern old Yankee woman who said, "you know, dog is god spelled backwards."

Laurie and Blair PESSEMIER
"Resolution" (ship/tug in New Haven harbor) acrylic on canvas  12 x 12 inches  $175.00
 
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Reply #2 - Dec 16th, 2008 at 1:49am

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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
 
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Reply #1 - Dec 1st, 2008 at 12:34am

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To the tune of Jingle Bells, fifes, played by slight, grizzled men in stocking caps led the parade, wooden rope-tension snare and bass drums pounded behind.  A dozen red metal tractors bedecked with wreathes and lights followed the Stony Creek muster.  A flatbed truck with a three piece band and pretty girls dressed in white ski jackets and wings pealed "do you recall the most famous reindeer of all..."

It was the Branford Christmas Tree Lighting Parade last night.  At least a thousand people were in attendance, not least of all Blair, Harika and I.  Our dog has nerves of steel, not even flinching as the howling firetruck, bearing Santa, Mrs. Claus and Rudolf, drove by.

I had goosebumps, not from the cold, but from the charm of it all.  Just twenty four hours before I was cursing the idiocy of the Christmas shopping season (really, who NEEDS to shop at 4 AM? what could matter that much?).   Here, children in red wagons waved sparkle wands, as parents drinking coffee from paper cups took pictures.  Brownies shouted "Happy Holidays" and the catholic school kids dared "Merry Christmas".

We gave thanks at our first American Thanksgiving in over a decade on Thursday.  I cooked a Norman Rockwell turkey at my parents house, with Vermont maple syrup turnips and homemade pearl onion gratinee.  Cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and a roster of home cooked pies, borne on the arms of my sister, rounded out the meal.  I made hot mulled wine.

We watched Macy's Thanksgiving day parade on my family's TV, on the heels of the carnage in Mumbai.  Bangkok airport closes.  I am beginning to think this is a revolution of the poor against the rich, not an east-west fight.

Connecticut is famous for it's fife and drum corps', a form of music associated with the (historic) military.  Not far from here, the Deep River, CT, fife and drum corps made the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest "muster", in 1976.  In America, such music evokes the Revolutionary War, when people stood shoulder to shoulder for their freedom. When there is nothing else to lose, one can risk it all.

Moments after the parade concluded, Santa Claus threw the switch to light the Christmas tree on the green.  Blair, Harika and I walked back home, to the tune of Christmas carols.

Laurie (painting and text) and Blair PESSEMIER
Lighting the Christmas Tree    Acrylic on canvas  18 x 14 inches  $150.00
 
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Nov 10th, 2008 at 11:13pm

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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
 
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