Around the Museums

 We took a few days out in the city.

At the High Museum I enjoyed the works of Camille Pissarro. He is always a big favorite of mine, and I was happy to see his Snowscape with Cows. It's always a pleasure to fall into a snowy day painting in the middle of summer!!

Can't you just hear the crunch of this snow as the animals and people walk along? Can't you just smell the cold of this day? I first encountered Pissarro at the Musee D'Orsay in Paris when I was twenty something, and to say I was overwhelmed is an understatement!

Here in town, I also enjoyed Beach and Rocks by  Thomas Worthington Whittenredge which I guess speaks to my lonely soul (!) and to Moonlit Market which seems to me to be a very narrative painting--something Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens. Interesting that it is by John Mengels Culverhouse an American born in Holland. The buildings here appeared to me to be very Dutch. Imagine a time before electricity!

We enjoyed a light lunch out and went out again the next week to the puppetry museum.  Here I learned that old Italian Pulcinello is the same character, sort of, as Punch. Punch was just easier to say in other parts of the world. I had no idea.

I have always had a love for puppets, for making them and working them. Once, long ago, I was even in a children's television show and worked a puppet! In more recent years, I have tried to explain difficult stories to my high school students using puppets. It is so much better to have a puppet Reynard the Fox when I tell the story about him!

One of the most fascinating things I saw at the museum was a video of a Vietnamese puppet show done in water! The puppeteers stand behind the stage in the water to work the puppets. It is really exciting to see a swimming snake attack a man on a boat, or even better, a dragon!

I am hoping that we get out and around again this week. 

Meanwhile, I am knitting. I frogged a pair of socks with a fleegle heel because I just did not like the fit. I may try--gasp!--two at a time knitted socks instead with an afterthought heel. I also finished the yoke on my Lunenburg pullover--I'll post that next time.

I am also writing a lot while looking out this window at my lovely garden. Thank goodness we've had rain!  The weeks are going by so quickly now! Happy summer!