Quiet, morning moments

Ebola, Isis, earthquakes. Then there are those quiet, morning moments when the stars align, and our very own is in just the right angle, at just the right time, to make something beautiful that can quiet the mind and restore the soul.

We are all corals now

Another wonderful interview by Krista Tippett - this one with physicist Margaret Wertheim. A favorite excerpt:

Ms. Wertheim: One of the things about the reef project that I feel is important is that it's a constructive response to a devastating problem. I think most people, as I am, are completely freaked out about the problem of global warming. What can we do? Can we do anything? And the reef project — the Crochet Coral Reef project is a metaphor, and it goes like this: if you look at real corals, a head of coral is built by thousands of individual coral polyps working together. Each coral polyp is a tiny insignificant little critter with almost no power of its own. But when billions of coral polyps come together, they can build the Great Barrier Reef, the largest living thing on earth and the first living thing that you can see from outer space.
The Crochet Coral Reef is a human analog of that. These huge coral reef installations that we build with communities are built by hundreds and sometimes thousands of people working together. So the project capitulates, in human action, the power and greatness of what corals themselves are doing. And I think the metaphor of the project is, look what we can do together. We humans, each of us are like a coral polyp. Individually, we’re insignificant and probably powerless. But together, I believe we can do things. And I think the metaphor of the project is we are all corals now.

And the first of the pix I took on my most-recent trip to visit Pam, 11.April.2013 (can it be that long ago?). The trip was to have been in Feb. that year, but we had a blizzard that weekend. So I got to see the blossoming cherry trees in D.C. for the first time (at least for moi).

Inside the Torpedo Factory where Pam (center of picture) teaches & makes art.

Jefferson memorial, I think.

Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial.

Near and far

Some shots from our yard awhile ago, when it was awash in blue, as well as a Radiolab segment on human perception of color, "Why isn't the sky blue?," (link provided in case your browser, like mine, won't display the audio) and some links to images from the Hubble telescope in celebration of its 25th birthday.

Heart of the Tarantula Nebula

Sombrero Galaxy

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And a special, secret one.

Spring finery

Jumping the queue - an even dozen photos of the spring finery gracing our yard at present. Beautiful day out there - heading up to the upper 60sF according to my weather widget. Tootling and perhaps toddling & probably laundry on tap for today.

Loving kindness

I'm always grateful when I wake up early enough on a Sunday AM to catch On Being. This week's  episode, an interview with Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest famous for his gang intervention programs in Los Angeles, is no exception. Here are some favorite excerpts:

Well, if you presume that God is compassionate loving-kindness, all we're asked to do in the world is to be in the world who God is. And so you're always trying to... imitate the kind of God you believe in. You want to move away from whatever is tiny-spirited and judgmental, as I mentioned. But you want to be as spacious as you can be that you can have room for stuff. And love is all there is, and love is all you are. And you want people to recognize the truth of who they are, that they're exactly what God had in mind when God made them. . .

I read once that the Beatitudes was — the original language was not "Blessed are" or "Happy are" the single-hearted or those who work for peace or struggle for justice. The more precise translation is "You're in the right place if …" And I like that better because it turns out the Beatitudes is not a spirituality. It's a geography. It tells you where to stand. You're in the right place if you're over here.
So, I come from Hollywood where we say, “Location, location, location.” And it's about location. You really have to go out. But knowing that service is the hallway that leads to the ballroom, you don't want to have service be the end. It's the beginning. It's getting you to the ballroom, which is the place of kinship, the place of mutuality, that place that everybody knows here. When you go there, you go, “Who is receiving from whom? Who's the service provider? Who's the service recipient?” You hear yourself say that. “I know I'm here at the soup kitchen, but, my God, I'm getting more from this.” You know, everybody knows this. But it doesn't happen unless you break out. And fear is just fueled by ignorance. So you have to break out of our ignorance. We have to go to the place that frightens us, you know?

That Moon Language (by the 14th-century Persian poet Hafiz)

"Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, 'Love me.'
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?"

If you don't have time to listen to the entire show, the transcript is here.

And last but not least, a shot from almost 2 years ago, 10.April.2013

My trip to the MFA

to see the Hokusai show. You'll probably be able to tell I didn't have my camera & had to rely on the ipad. Still haven't mastered that as an image-taking device. Off kilter, out of focus. When I saw someone taking pictures with a tablet @ the exhibition & said to her that she was much better at it than I, she passed along a tip from her husband, a photographer: keep your elbows close to your body; it keeps the camera steadier. That helped a little, except I have a case cover that I have to keep out of the way of the view finder, which complicates things.

Of interest might be to notice the color of the walls behind the artworks - the only time I thought it didn't work was the "blue room" where the walls were the a shade of the same color in most of the paintings using that particular color, causing them to sort of fade into the background somehow. You can see how that works, or doesn't esp. in the 4th picture.

I was also really intrigued in the wall (that I didn't take pictures of) that showed how you assemble a woodblock print from the bottom up, so to speak, adding details using separate blocks and different colors. My first thought was, wow, that must be hard to get everything to line up.

I think this is the right side up

Outside the swag shop.