blessings so far in 2025!

This dining room wall, with the painting of the Wormsloe Plantation gifted by step-sister Susan (for my wedding to Jeff back in 1992), is where I always begin posting the programs and tickets from events attended.

Amazingly, I paid for only eleven of those events I attended between January and April.

Several of the free ones are from events at the Telfair or Jepson museums, courtesy of my membership to those cultural sites.

Some are free events I found on fb.

And quite a few are from volunteer stints for the Savannah Music Festival (SMF36) or the Savannah VOICE Festival!

Plus, the Savannah Jewish Cultural Arts Festival and the Black History Month events were all free this year, too.

That pink mesh bag?

That's a party souvenir, as well as a memento of my trip to Tallahassee!

This smaller bit of dining room wall, graced with a framed bit of embroidery done by my one-and-only Grandma, has the next set of blessings.

Those events, between mid-April to mid-June, include six that cost money.

Technically, the week-long vacation to Orlando with Christina and her daughters also cost money, but Christina covered the gas and food expenses, so I consider it fairly even.

But that meant I had two trips, in fairly quick succession - hooray!

Then there's my third dining room wall on which I post event mementos.

That's the wall with the painting I bought in Italy for less than ten Euros.

I had actually resisted putting anything up there for almost a month.

I was a bit blue then and thought I'd just forget about that wall.

Then came the second party at Bonnie Blue's little blue house and I taped all the programs and museum lecture notes and such right on up there!

Amazing what that did for my mindset!

Four events had a fee attached, but that was all.

Then I had volunteer duties for eight glorious events with SFV13!

Now, that wall is full... and life is good.

I am surrounded by the proof that I am not missing out on fun!

Hooray for retirement!

in reflection

For the second time this month, I've made a mistake about the date of an event.

The first time was last week, when I showed up for an AARP event, absolutely sure that it was scheduled for Friday, the 18th.

That party won't be held until Friday, August 8th.

Sheesh.

Then, today, I went to the Jepson at noon for a Lunch & Learn that included a performance by the artist featured in the (Un)Grounded exhibit.

Nope, that won't happen until August 29th.

Seriously.

I didn't let it stop me from having a day at the museum!

After all, I already had 90 minutes on the parking meter.

(smile!) 

I'd not visited the "In Reflection: Contemporary Art And Ourselves" exhibit.

How appropriate that I take a few moments there, n'est-ce pas?

Maybe pull together my mental faculties?

Yes.

And as I perused the various and varied works there, I was stopped in my tracks by her.

Isn't she magnificent?!

Pulled together from odd bits and pieces reclaimed from the environment, 'she' is "Black Girl on Skateboard Going Where She's Got to Go to Do What She's Got to Do and It Might Not Have Anything to Do With You, Ever."

Yes, ma'am, you go on your merry way with your bad self!!!

(smile!) 

The artist, born in 1976, is vanessa german - and, yes, that's all lower-case.

 I wouldn't mind seeing more of her sassy works!

 

Feeling better about my mind, I immediately went to another work in the same space, as it reminded me of my brother Smitty.

It was untitled, but done tongue-in-cheek as a joke for other artists.

See, it was the custom for some to put their art on the floor, not the wall.

Get it?

Instead, she'd done this pseudo-parquet piece, for display on the wall.

I found it hilarious!

While making a note of her name, though, I was stuck.

Was her first name really "Slyvia"???

I checked with the room monitor, just in case.

She came over and checked the label, too, and found it was incorrect.

The artist is actually Sylvia Mangold and she is known for these "representational depictions of interiors".

Here's the thing: this exhibit has been up since April 25th...

and I was the only one to catch the typo in her name.

Kudos to me!

The room monitor reported it while I was there.

(smile!)

Another piece I really liked was on four huge sheets of paper.

It seems that Rocio Rodriguez got started drawing and just kept adding another blank as she went along.

I liked it because it reminds me of my scribble flowers!

I like the idea of my art having made it onto the walls of the museum!

In fact, this particular piece belongs to the Telfair, so it will likely be on one wall or another for years to come. 

(smile!) 

The odd thing was the title: "February 3, 2005". 

Was she marking the date that Alberto Gonzalez was approved by the Senate and sworn in as the first Hispanic named as Attorney General in US history?

Perhaps so.

As a 53 year old Hispanic woman, seeing a Hispanic person rise to that position in the federal government would have been a unique event.

This piece may have been crafted as the pomp and circumstance that she would have deemed the situation warranted.

Once in a lifetime events deserve special recognition.

(Yes, I did include one such that should never be repeated.)

 

After I left the Jepson, I considered going to the Telfair's basement to visit a few of my favorite statues, as I do for my birthday visits, but there really wasn't enough time to do it justice.

(Just us tripping out a little pun!)

Instead, I sat on a bench (another judge joke!) for more than ten minutes.

It truly was a 'blue true dream of sky' day that e.e. cummings celebrated in his poetry and would have loved.

And here was this ancient oak, with its 'leaping greenly spirit' draped with Spanish moss gently swaying in the slight breeze - so awesome!

Happy bday67 to me, still, almost two months later.

Right time, right place, after all. 

(smile!)

bday67 at jepson, jason's, and dance!

Today has all been a wonderful gift from the Universe to me!

What do I mean by that?

Everything I did today was absolutely free -

and everything was exactly what I wanted to do!

It all began with the Lunch & Learn at the Jepson Center this morning.

I found my favorite parking spot - that coin meter by the SCAD gym on Barnard - and had enough change to get 2 1/2 hours for my $2.50.

A street worker asked me how to get to Broughton... so I enlightened him with my little acronym "AH GLOBB", my mnemonic based on old scifi movies.

AH GLOBB stands for: Anderson, Henry, Gaston, Liberty, Oglethorpe, Broughton, Bay.

Those are the cross streets that have traffic lights on Drayton as one proceeds from south to north downtown on that one-way street.

Ah, Globb!!!

The guy really got a kick out of that!

Right place, Right time!

On I went into the Jepson, having deliberately arrived a half-hour early to take in the sights.

I'd not yet visited "The Moss Mystique: Southern Women And Newcomb Pottery" and thought I should at least hit a few of the items before the lecture.

I'm glad I did!

One of the other women on this tour came over afterward to tell me how impressed she was with what I knew!

See, this particular piece had caught my eye at once, and its title confirmed what I already knew it to be: "Plate with spiderwort flowers".

Alma Simmons must have cultivated them in her yard back in 1907 for her to have so fondly painted their image onto this art!  

After all, that's what the genteel ladies did at this Louisiana institute: they "decorated" the pottery and earthenware crafted by men.

This particular plate, as well as many other pieces in the exhibit here, was fashioned by Joseph Fortune Meyer.

However, the women were the ones who earned income from the sales of this art, and they chose flowers from their homes in the southeast as inspiration: spiderwort, camellias, azaleas, hydrangea, day lilies.

 

Mama would have loved this!

I hadn't likened my little Christmas angel and Mama's other pieces sent to me in 1981 to these works until I saw this display.

It showed the clay all the way from greenware, through the first firing in the kiln, then through a second process, to the final firing of the painted work.

I remembered Mama talking about 'greenware' and how fragile it was.

Maybe now is the time to take Cameron's class in ceramics. 

Right place, right time.

This truly has been a perfect gift for my bday67.

I had missed my annual visit to the museums for my birthday this year, but for good reason.

Then, I meant to peruse the Jepson more a few weeks ago, while I was there for the outdoor exhibit, but somehow that didn't happen.

Hence, the reason I had allotted so much time for today's trip here.

However, this luncheon lecture went on for well over an hour!

That's thanks in large part to the engaging guest speaker, Joanna Angel, the tall blonde on the right, against the wall, with Erin Dunn of the Jepson helping to field questions and spark discussions. 

By the way, that's Erin with her back against the case that holds the "Plate with spiderwort flowers".

Perfect, right?

We had begun the tour in the other half of this major exhibit, eventually making it into this area, which is where I began today.

(smile!)

 

Afterward I did some preliminary exploring of the changes in the Children's Art Museum section.

That entryway has been refashioned as a yellow submarine and features the crayon-and-pencil seafaring art of William O. Golding!

I'll have another "Lunch & Learn" next month to give me the details on that.

By then it was time to rescue my car.

I made it back with ten minutes to spare!

Time to get slunch and I knew exactly where to go: Jason's Deli!

They were still holding a dessert for my birthday but I knew not what.

I settled on a slice of blueberry cake, a special that they had to enter as "strawberry" cake for me to get it free.

I cared not what they called it as long as it was free!

Then I did what I learned from Barbara about the value of the Salad Bar To-Go, making myself two delicious servings, with broccoli salad for lunch and the spicy corn-and-bean salad for dinner.

Just perfect for this Friday night!

 

Before I knew it, it was time to bop down toward Windsor Forest.

One Spirit Dance Academy had a special performance and, wonder of wonders, it was free!

Silly me, I had missed on the poster that "A Twenty-Year Journey" was the Summer Camp show!

Held in the gym of Windsor Forest Church, the parking lot was packed and so was the auditorium.

(I'm wearing my sleeveless, 'spring flowers', dress, and was in the back row, seated between the man in the red shirt and the man in the white shirt.

That photo was put on fb by one of the photographers at the event.) 

I absolutely loved the show!

Combining gospel songs and dance stories of the troupe through the last two decades, I felt so blessed to be there.

Right place, right time.

The 2002 penny I found at the Publix after the show confirmed it for me.

i thank You, God!

bday67 gift from the Jepson... new window art!

I always enjoy the talks with the artists at the Jepson Center.

The format for many of them have changed in the last couple of years.

Previously, the artist would be introduced, then they would provide insight into their works by presenting us with a lecture.

No more of that.

Someone from the museum - Erin Dunn, this time - would give a brief biography of the artist, then they would sit on the stage in comfy chairs and chat, with occasional questions to lead the discussion.

Erin is the one on the left, with Dana Richardson in the middle and Lisa Watson rounding out the trio on the stage.

This year's #art912 Boxed In/Boxed Out exhibit is titled "Heroes And Hosts" and will be displayed for all passersby to enjoy until next April.

"Heroes And Hosts" is science-friendly, presenting native habitats, native plants, and native animals as the featured stars, with nary a human in sight.

Very nice!!!

That's because Lisa Watson is a Georgia peach, like me, with a definite interest in making sure these native species live for future generations.

Lisa is also a found-objects artist, creating her sculptures from items discarded by others, whereas Dana is a painter and provided all the backgrounds for the six windows.

The scene above them demonstrates their collaborative nature as they worked on one of the window displays in Dana's studio.

 

Here is part of that very window as it now exists in this exhibit.

Dana's canvas is actually partly rumpled at the bottom, as it was too long for the allowed 13" depth inside the frame.

They kept it that way to mimic the leafy ground around the gopher tortoise hole.

And that creature trying to crawl out of the display?

That's the gopher tortoise itself, moving from the opening of the deep hole it's dug.

Is that where it lives?

Nope, it digs those holes for others to live in, especially during brush fires.

What a kind beast!

I do look forward to spending more time with the windows!

Thanks to the Jepson Center for this bday67 gift, not only to me, but to the world!

Nice to see Axelle and Jordan there, as well as Tomasc!

(smile!)

bday67 girls' trip: bonnet springs park!

Christina found this one for us - most excellent!!!

Bonnet Springs Park is on about 160 acres of what once was a train yard in Lakeland.

Now, it's walking trails, playgrounds, exercise sites, picnic areas, various gardens, and even a first-class museum.

All of it's free, too, except the last one.

There's even a free shuttle to get people from one site to another, and multiple parking areas for folks to use at their favorites.

 

We started at the Welcome Center, on the far right on the map, parking there, then being on foot for most of the rest of the day.

The girls loved playing on the train, but we convinced them to try out another playground after we'd been there about thirty minutes.

Following the squiggles, our path led across the Heritage Gardens and then veered left, over to the base of South Mountain, going toward the Circulator (shuttle road).

What a fabulous hill!!!

And look!

It has three trees on the top, just like there are three people on its slope!

Now what are they doing?

Why, the first niece is trying to teach Miyah and Chloe how to roll down the hill!!!

Oh, joy!!!

Chloe was very good at it!

Miyah kept throwing her arms out, not realizing that was actually stopping her roll.

I'm sure she'll get the hang of it with more practice!

I didn't hang around to watch, though, wanting to have a little birthday adventure of my own!

Up, up, up I climbed the South Mountain, reaching the crest!

Then down, down, down I carefully sidestepped until I reached the parking lot for the Florida Children's Museum.

That place had an incredible giant alligator - made of metal, with traffic cones as teeth and the spines on its back - that begged for children to play on it!

They reached the patio entrance just a little after I did, having circled around the hill.

Ready to go in?

Yes, yes, and look at D.O.T. hanging from the ceiling! The colorful dragon of toys that it took 47 people to make! 

Yes, yes, and look at the giant yellow alligator outside to play on!

Yes, yes, and look at the science area with the lab coats and race tracks!

Yes, yes, and look at the Watermelon Seeds play area inside where it's nice and cool!

Yes, yes, and all it cost us was $3 apiece, thanks to my Senior SNAP card.

Hallelujah for the Museums For All program!

Soon enough, we were all ready for our picnic lunch.

That meant going back to her Christina's car at the Welcome Center.

Time to check out the shuttle service!

Oh, but a lightning warning came into effect, so Mark - the driver - had to pull over to the Nature Center (left of the lake on the map) until the "All Clear!" was given.

That just gave us another place to explore, along with the pier and boathouse.

 

Within an hour, all had the signal to move along, which was good.

We were definitely hungry!

Thanks to my first niece, we had a picnic lunch ready to be eaten: sandwiches, chips, tiny Slim Jims, cold beverages, and cookies for dessert.

Yes, yes, she loves us so very much that she even plans our meals while on vacation! 

She's the best!!!

(smile!)

What was next to do???

Should we stay afoot?

No, let's take the shuttle over to the Owl playground!

I don't know, just look at that dark rain cloud coming up fast.

Why not take the car and drive there instead?

Hey, here's a better plan!

We'll drive back to the museum and y'all can play inside until they close, okay? 

So that's exactly what we all did!

We returned to the FCM for their last forty minutes, with the girls' choice to go to the second floor to explore.

They fell in love with the City Play area!

Child-sized grocery store and pet doctor, pizza stand and police office -

so many career paths to follow and move on!

Too soon closing time came and we couldn't stay there.

However, we could be part of the departure parade, waving banners and banging drums and marching happily along!!! 

I even marched, too, with a yellow ribbon banner, celebrating on this Tina Tuesday -

what glorious fun!!!

And guess what?

This was such a big hit -

and such a big park -

that we're going back tomorrow!

Hooray!!!

Thank you, Christina, for finding this place!!! 

grandpa would have loved this exhibit

 

Come to think of it, my stepdad would have, too, especially this map.

Don't be fooled into thinking it's static for this one year.

Oh, no.

It scrolled through centuries, showing the first appearance of the Venetian Republic, then continuing as it waxed and waned against the Ottoman Empire.

As soon as I saw it yesterday, I thought of Frank and wondered what he would make of it, and what discussion we might have had.

Grandpa, as a history buff on things gone by in Italy and Greece, would have been impressed with all the pieces concerned with trade in that region of the world.

 

I was glad to have been there at 2 PM for the daily docent tour.

Melissa was very informative and enjoyed fielding my questions for her fifteen-minute spell with me and a young Turkish couple.

I had noticed "The Battle Of Lepanto" yesterday, particularly the images of Jesus and Mary in the upper left, overseeing the naval warfare.

The docent told me that a lot of paintings around the mid-16th and 17th centuries included religious figures, signifying the strength of the Christian faith versus that of the Islamic or other faiths followed by the Ottomans.

 

The other couple liked the cookbooks on display, as well as the wooden boxes used for storing spices (specifically, those had once contained cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cumin, black pepper, and peppermint).

I couldn't smell any remnants of those herbs, but the man insisted he could.

Power of suggestion, I proposed to him, but he didn't accept that.

By then the tour was done, so I carried on with the Family Activity Guide for this "Venice And The Ottoman Empire" exhibit.

Near the cookbooks was this painting - Sign Of The Guild Of Chefs - of a kitchen and dining room, with a bevy of cherubic lounging above them.

The task was to list things that were visible, like the 9 men at the table, or the dog taking a drink of water from the cistern, or the kitchen boy plucking chickens.

I thought I might do that at home.
I preferred the two scavenger hunt games for the limited time I had today!

This first one had several items - shoes, a hat, a drum, and a porcelain bowl - to try to locate in the huge exhibit.

They all turned out to be from the mid-1600's to 1700, making them all far older than the United States of America.

That first item I knew from yesterday; it's a pair of wooden bath clogs.

They certainly didn't look comfortable, nor did that horn hat for Francesco Morosini, worn when he was the Doge (from 1688 to 1694).

That general had been all the rage, apparently!

There was even a marble bust and a painting of him in this collection!

Next is the percussion instrument, specifically called a naqqaro; I wonder what sound it made, with that metal base?

No way to know, as it was securely behind glass.

And that final item, with its lovely coloring, was a barber's bowl, to catch the hair from shaving the customers, perhaps.

(smile!)

The other scavenger hunt dealt with my specialty as a puzzle-solving analytical person: patterns!!!

There were four different floral motifs to locate, with no clues to location.

The middle two were found in paintings as part of clothing; the one with the red center to its golden flower was in the robe of Doge Cristoforo Moro (ruler from 1462 to 1471), whereas the golds on white dressed Sultan Mehmed II, in power just before that time.

Done and done!

However, the first and last florals took me quite a bit of searching.

The huge red-and-gold centered design was one I thought I'd seen earlier, so I retraced my steps from the tour... and there it was, part of the Persian rug adorning the table in the "Family Portrait" of the wealthy middle-class Venetians in the mid-1500's.

That left the orange flower... where could it be???

Ah, that's when I noticed that some of the shields mounted on the walls at the Jepson had decorations on their central portions!

Hooray! That's where it had been all that time, ever since the late 16th century!

By that time, my shift at the Trinity UMC for SMF36 was too near to complete the last portion of the activity page.

It was all about one-point perspective, a technique for making things appear smaller when farther away in a painting.

Do feel free to work on it... I must fly!

smf36: like kinnear, but no in and with a u

"Dearie me, what are you talkin' 'bout now?"

The classical pianist who played music from the third Indiana Jones movie this afternoon, over at Trinity UMC. He was so excited to do that!!!

"Oh, I recognize him from last year, with Philip Dukes. He had an unusual last name... I'll think of it. However, you must be mistaken about that movie music being part of his set."

I most certainly am no! This concert was all about "Hollywood" and centered on music arranged by David Newman, a big name in movie music. Thanks to Newman, the pianist had an entire collection of musical scores that were for scenes shot in Venice, Italy, and that included that Harrison Ford flick as well as the one with Daniel Crag as 'James Bond'. Altogether there were eight films, but that one with the geologist and the one with Agent 007 were "living the dream" for him! The others were "A Little Romance", "Don't Look Now", "The Merchant Of Venice", " Casanova", "Casino Royale", "Le Guignola", and "The Tourist". I was so inspired that I bopped over to the Jepson to catch "Venice And The Ottoman Empire" until the museum closed at 5 PM. I'll be going back there tomorrow to take my time with that exhibit! I just love that 'gondola ride' experience!!! It reminds me of going to the Venetian in Las Vegas with my BFF, back in 2010, and riding a gondola there. Most def something I want to do again in October!

"Oh, that will be such a good time of year to return to that shining, sleepless, city in the desert!"

For sure!

"So, are you going to tell me the pianist's name or what?"

Oops, my bad! He's Sebastian Knauer, but with a German pronunciation. So, that's why I said it's "like Kinnear", meaning the 'K' is sounded. I thought it was silent, like with 'knee', but, nope. So, no 'in' after the 'K', then throw in a 'u' and say it like 'now er' as in "now or later". That makes it 'K now er'. That means German is like Polish, with all consonants getting sounded, even if it means extra syllables.

"Okay, I hadn't heard that before, but it makes sense as both are from the same base. Who are the others on the stage?"

Let's start with the female on violin, Grace Park, and go counter clockwise, shall we? The other violinist is Benny Kim. The viola is played by Robin Ashwell, the cello by Brook Speltz, and the huge bass is wielded by Marc Chesanow. Speaking of him, I chatted with him before clocking in for my volunteer shift with SMF36. Guess what? He lives in midtown, too, and not far from me. We'd both been concerned about a possible lack of parking, due to the Publix 5K Races this morning, but neither of us had an issue. In fact, he left shortly after our talk to return home for his tripod and made it back just fine.

"Well, listen to you, g'friend! I'm so glad you got to meet one of the boys in the band!"

Aw, you know it wasn't like that... but it was nice to talk to him. That made the concert more personal for me, you know? When I signed up for this shift, I'd hoped to recognize many of the movie songs, but that wasn't the case. Most of the movies were ones I'd seen once, if at all, and there were no singable songs in these suites. Still, I did find myself dancing a bit, so that was definitely a win!

"I know it was! And where are you off to now, you busy, vibrant, woman?"

It's a Swap Party at Dawn's, to raise money for the Georgia Transplant Foundation. I haven't yet picked out any items to take with me, so I must go! Now! Bye!