Real gansai paints for etegami are intense. 

 Love oranges in the winter.

The Good Fairy

Looks like the good fairy, Inez America Madson has come to bless her new sister, Lucia Anahi Madson.  All are well and enjoying the California spring.  Aren't little girls the BEST?

Cleaning my art desk

So I spent a delightful evening cleaning my art desk and putting everything back into little pots and jars and boxes.  There is something cleansing about this kind of an activity.  The net result is a sense of order and to a certain extent, control.  Now, I have it all in place.  Of course it won't' stay that way long, but it does feel good today.  It's a little embarrassing to report on this. With all that needs doing in the world cleaning an art desk must not be high on the planetary bullet list.  

My lamp

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A day at the Museum . . .

Saturday was going to the museums alone . . . a favorite way to spend a day.  First I went to the De Young Museum to see the spectacular "Jean Paul Gaultier" show.  A high fashion and theatrical designer for the past forty years  Gaultier has produced a body of work that defies description.  You really need to see this show before it closes in August.  To clear my mind after this blowout I went to the Asian Art Museum for a cup of coffee.

Bad Art Night etegami

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Some tulips grow on trees

Rhododendron at last

Shortly after moving into our El Granada home we planted a few hardy bushes and shrubs. Among them was a peach colored rhododendron. It has grown over the years--always a full coat of glossy leaves. But no flowers. Every year in the spring we watch this plant put out miniature buds that never come to flower. We have pretty much given up on ever seeing a peach colored blossom. And then, miracle of miracles this year the bush burst forth. What a joyous thing.
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Etegami

Recently I've discovered an art form from Japan called "Etegami"  E stands for picture and tegami stands for words or message.  So, a small picture accompanied by words which are written on the painting itself.  In Japan many of these are done simply with black and white Sumi ink.  A distinguishing characteristic of these little treasures is the use of a red seal (chop) that gives the artist's name.  
Years ago when I was spending time in Japan every year I had a number of these chops made by a local seal maker in Kameoka.  I use them on watercolors to sign my pieces.  Now I'm enjoying embarking on an adventure doing etegami.  I've made a new friend in Japan, Debbie, who has been promoting etegami with a delightful website:  EtegamibyDosankoDebbie.  For  a while I plan to post my humble attempts at this form on this blog.  

On Kindness

One of the pleasures of retirement is the freedom to spend the morning in a contemplative way.  A favorite early beginning for me is to turn on our gas fireplace to combat the morning chill, make a steaming pot of Earl Grey Tea and sit in my chair by the window.  I may simply sit quietly and breathe into the morning or reach for something to read that can help set my intention for the day. 

Inspirational books are piled by my place.  This morning I turned to the Celtic poet John O’Donohue.  His early death at the age of 52 robbed us of a poignant and powerful voice.  His book, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, published in 2008, is full of rich insights. 

         There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect.  The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself.  . . . The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo the presence of compassionate goodness.  When someone is kind to you, you feel understood and seen.  There is no judgment or harsh perception directed toward you.  Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself.  Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart.   . . .  Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway.  This is the heart of blessing.  To believe in blessing is to believe that our being here, our very presence in the world, is itself the first gift, the primal blessing.  As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel—to be here is immense.       P 185-186 from  To Bless Space Between Us.

Kindness has been on my mind lately.  Recently on a trip to Denver my husband and I were invited to dinner at the home of a former Stanford student who had graduated nearly twenty years ago.  Jason and his wife Tonya and their two lovely daughters, Olivia and Ramona were living in a beautiful home with views of the surrounding Colorado mountains.  A young academic now, Jason was involved with the environment and public policy issues.  His wife had just launched a new career as a professional photographer.  They had just come back from a family weekend of hiking and frolicking in the mountains.  Thanks to the miracle of GPS we found their suburban neighborhood in Golden, CO and were welcomed warmly.  We proffered some ice cream to add to the dinner, which was swept away to the freezer until time to serve it.  

The meal was a wonderful roasted pepper pasta with a cashew sauce, made freshly in the kitchen where we set a family table to share the meal.  It was such a pleasure to catch up with the twenty year passage of time.  For dessert Jason brought forward a chocolate mousse cake that the girls had chosen at the Safeway along with the two cartons of ice cream which we had brought.  We all served ourselves and enjoyed the sweets along with some excellent herbal tea. 

Dessert was followed by a rousing game of “Apples to Apples” a family game that matches random words with some category or adjective.  Everyone tries to “win” each round and lots of laughter is let loose as we all vie for the best choice of what is “weird” or “green.”  After the score was tallied (I think Jason won) the girls said their goodnights and Tonya took them to bed.  She later joined us for a little more conversation and telling stories of old times before we made a modestly early departure.  It was one of those evenings that felt perfect.  It was wholesome and happy and natural. 

This morning as I was thinking back on the pleasures of that visit I had a satori.   “Ron,” I said, “It just hit me: Jason’s family is vegan.  They don’t eat dairy.  I remember now that they offered the girls soymilk for dinner.  VEGAN!!  Oh, my goodness, and we brought ice cream.  Ice cream.

And, the remarkable thing was that not once did anyone mention this.  And, when the ice cream was brought out each of them had a spoonful or two.  What is astonishing to me now is the unbelievable kindness of this. How marvelous that their young daughters knew how to handle this situation.  No one ever said, “Oh, thanks anyway.  We don’t eat dairy.”   Instead they all accepted our small but misguided gift and breaking their own preferences made us feel completely accepted.   What a miracle.  What a stunning act of kindness. 

The joy of tea

In the late1960's a small company in Boulder CA started making herbal tea bags. Celestial Seasonings is now a well known company that provides a diverse and healthy selection of teas.  Although they have been acquired by a large food company (the Hain Celestial Group)they became famous for the artwork on their packaging along with inspiring quotes.  I remember cutting little sayings off the boxes and using them for inspiration.  This package, which you may already recognize as the artwork for the Sleepytime Tea is my favorite.  Can you imagine a more peaceful scene?  It doesn't get any better than this.  "Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea."   

On a trip to Denver we visited the headquarters of Celestial Seasonings in Boulder.  A wonderful tour and a visit to the "Mint Room" where bales of peppermint and spearmint leaves create a scent so powerful that Ron's eye watered.  I breathed deep and enjoyed the rich healing property of the herb.

Spring dances with winter

Visiting Colorado in April has provided a diverse set of weather delights. The cherry blossoms everywhere have been bursting their hearts out. Today three inches of snow blanketed the Denver area. We awoke to a white world. These photos taken with my IPhone show the dance of the seasons. We were in Boulder at the Celestial Seasonings factory when I made these shots. On the day we arrived, two days ago, Sunday, it was 82 degrees downtown in Denver.

Location:Boulder, CO ,United States

Nnemkadi Ogwumike: Stanford legend

Most of my life has been spent ignoring sports. Never athletic myself, I somehow missed the roar of the crowd as a fan during my five decades as a student and teacher. I needed to be retired and have my sports-manic husband finally drag me to a Stanford women's basketball game to begin to get the bug. And as my Facebook friends can attest my fan status today is SERIOUS.

Looking at my closet there is a preponderance of Cardinal red hanging and folded. I've given up fashion for patronage. I love the Stanford women's team, especially this 2011-2012 team led by the incomparable Nnemkadi Ogwumike. We will not see her on the court at Maples any more. She graduates and moves into the WNBA next year. She will be missed.

Much has been written about her. She embodies the finest in athletics and scholarship. Eternally positive, always gracious, the soul of gratitude, Nneka is the true leader and sister that makes sports worth watching. Although the team lost to Baylor last night, I won't remember the loss in that game. Instead I'll remember Nnemkadi, Chiney, Toni, Joselyn, and Amber and Lindy, Grace, Sarah, Taylor, Bonnie, Sarah James and Erica. These women have opened my eyes and my heart to the deep delights of sport. I wish Nneka and the other seniors great blessings as they advance in their lives. Now a rest from hoops. Until next season. . .



Nneka is hugged by assistant coach Kate Payne after the Baylor game. Photo borrowed from the San Jose Mercury sports.

Going to Denver for the Final Four

Our friends all know that we are SERIOUS women's basketball fans. Here we are decked out in our fan regalia at the CAL game a month ago. Since this day the Cardinal women have continued a winning streak. Two more games lie ahead: the famous Final Four this year in Denver. We face the Baylor women on Sunday night who are undefeated. It should be a glorious game. Go big RED!

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Start anywhere . . .

Where to start?

The fourth maxim of improvising is “Start anywhere.”  I have always seen this instruction as liberating.  If it does not matter where we start then we have no excuse not to get going.  Pronto.  What I’ve realized is that the word anywhere can be daunting.  It may even backfire.  If I can start anywhere then I have the entire field of possibility to consider.  Oh dear.  Instead of helping the improviser to simply jump in and begin the task it may provide a further dilemma.  Too many options may stymy action. 

Perhaps the better instruction is “Start where you are.”  This narrows the field and focuses on what is right in front of you.  It invites you to look around your environment or examine your current thought/preoccupation and begin with that.  Starting where you are requires that you notice where you are physically and mentally.  It takes into account doubt, confusion, bias . . . even the temperature of the room and the fact that you ate too much for lunch.  Start where you are. 

Check it out.  If I asked you to begin writing now answering the question:  “Where are you?”  I am confident that it would get you going.  So start where you are.  But start.

Improv at Work

As I exercised my faculty discount I found myself in a conversation with the clerk checking out my art supplies at FLAX.  He asked me what I taught at Stanford, and when I replied “Improvisation” he cheered up.


“What do you teach in an improv class?” he asked.  


“Improv is where we put people above ideas,” I replied (surprising myself with this slick logo).  “More important than content is relationship.  It’s the class in which we learn that good will and cooperation trumps cleverness. In an improv class we study how to put our ego in the back seat.”


At least these are the values that I emphasize when I teach the fundamentals of improvising.  Intrinsic to the practice of Yes-AND is the notion that my job as a partner is to accept, make sense out of and then add to whatever my partner offers to start a scene.  It does not matter what the offer is. We simply avoid judgment or evaluation during the act of improvising.  (That may come later … ) Knowing that we are on stage (in this life?) together to move a story forward in real time means that I have to develop the part of me that creates constructively with the materials at hand whatever they are.  I don’t have time to stand around and debate if this is a good idea.   It’s my job to make it work.  And what blows me away is how often this strategy succeeds at creating something wonderful. 


Of course, the work place isn’t an improv stage, and there are consequences to decisions.  In the big picture the improv maxim:  “All ideas are equally valid … as starting places” isn’t strictly true.  Some ideas turn out to be better than others.  However, if we use the improv model to explore possibilities to get to those really useful ideas/products/approaches I believe that worlds can open up.  And, a secondary payoff in the workplace is the sense of trust and good will that can develop among colleagues if we all become more likely to accept the ideas of others.  Playing the critic is so yesterday! Wouldn’t you like to be part of a company that puts people above ideas?  I would.


Reposted from Improv At Work


http://www.improvwisdom.com

My desk in El Granada

My stepson, Jason is a professional photographer.  He has just been visiting for a week.  What delight just doing ordinary things together.  He has an unerring eye with a camera.  He took this shot in black and white of my work desk at home.  It seems cheerful and welcoming.  Why is it, I wonder, that I don't spend more time here writing?  Writers will understand this conundrum.  

Here is Jay and his dad trying to capture the Bay Bridge on Thursday.  Sweet.

Maya Stein's YES

In my book, Improv Wisdom, the first maxim is to say YES.  It has implications.  I have rarely read a tribute to yes which says it better than this remarkable poem by Maya Stein.  Please visit her blog.

yes
yes
after a violent rain,
bloody battle on the roof
mud-inked, wind-broken
roots chunked and hazardous
the velocity of the river a cause
for posted signs and nervous dogs
yes
yes
to blisters on shoulders from too much
sun, mouth woolly, limbs limp
as old dandelions yes
to skinned knees and black-bruised
egos, shyness and tongue-tripping yes
yes yes to the slow crawl of indecision
to remorse to hideous mistake
to saccharine and over-salted
to no vacancy and lost chances
yes to the ugly failures in front
of the hometown crowd
to oversized and under-whelmed
to cheats and lies and cowards
yes to the rips in your new silk dress
to torn up and torn down
yes to the conversation
you didn’t want to have
to irrational, irreconcilable, irreversible words
yes to cracked throats and busted ankles and spent light bulbs
and burned batteries and whatever dies after
it has lived
yes
to a broken promise or three or nine hundred
yes to the time it takes to tell the truth
yes to desert and dry spells and lunacy and lost hope
yes to the middle of a blind-white October
yes yes yes
to sharp and scrape and cauterize
to discard and done for
yes to ducking under yes to darkness
to breaking in two
or more pieces
than you can count
yes to the disappointing lunch
to the disappointing summer
to the disappointing marriage
yes to the seesaw fear of stillness and escape
yes to the bad haircut in eighth grade that ruined your chances
yes to the fumbling in the back seat that led
to your bad reputation
yes to beyond repair
to what’s done is done
to a change of heart mid-stream
yes to bad art
to old age
to out of shape and shapeless
yes to where have you been
and why didn’t you call
and how many times do I have to tell you
yes all of it yes
not a moment too soon or too late
this yes, this yes
this ripe and mad and fleshy terror of a thing
this yes will save us
tie our restless shoelaces and stroke
our fevered cheeks and pay off our
inglorious debts
this yes, this yes
this aching starved animal
will bear down until we open ourselves
to its wet mouth and slip our skin
under its teeth and feel its dark heart beating
ruthless against our lungs and let our heaviness fall
like a string of dominoes until we sing
our fragile, damaged beauty
into the waiting arms of the world.

Best intentions . . .

Greetings in the new year.  There is optimism about the possibility presented at the beginning of days.  I am stoked with resolve.  Today I received a weekly post from one of the best poets alive, Maya Stein.  She just kindly gave me permission to share her poem of the week.  It resonated with me and I bet it will with you.

my watercolor of Pomponio Beach, CA 

10-LINE TUESDAY B Y   M A Y A   S T E I N  the drift Sometime last week, after the revelry of the new year had passed, that bright resolve to steer the ship of my life in a freshly purposeful direction was dismantled by sudden doubt, like a flash frost blinding the windshield. I wandered the morning half-awake, wasting good daylight on a section of a tricky crossword, mindless with my meals, stingy with love. I could feel it, momentum draining out of me, trouble troubling the water, and all my proclamations about change and opportunity fell silent as old rocks. The day tumbled on, without visible meaning, until bed, when a sliver of moon rose behind the house. It wasn’t an answer, exactly, but I understood this: A journey calls for sea, not shore.  To meet Maya go to her website and then visit her blog.

Invitation

My task this week following Christmas is to pull together a serious pile to take to the Goodwill, or rather our local Coastside Senior Opportunity Center store.  One of the pleasures of sorting and stacking used books and clothing is to find shards of memorabilia.  Stuffed as a bookmark in a copy of a fading paperback was a 3 x 5 card with this poem handwritten.  I can't discern a date, but the back of the card was used to score some game when Ron and I partnered against our niece Elissa and her brother Ryan.  I wonder what the game was? Here is the poem. 

Invitation

You served breakfast on the beach

broke bread with thousands at a hillside picnic

celebrated with many at the marriage of Cana –

exciting events all of these.

But this morning it’s only me

on an ordinary Monday

requesting the honor of your presence

at my kitchen table

for coffee and conversation.

Comfort comes in knowing

you require neither

feasts nor crowds—

only an invitation.

Joan Rae Mills

      from “St. Anthony’s Messenger”

        a Catholic Magazine