Monday, April 25, 2011

A sure sign...

Spring has Sprung!! And I have the picture to prove it.



Zoe and Lindsay's excellent early morning Easter walk

Yesterday morning - Easter morning - dawned beautifully clear and warm. When Zoe and I set out, the sidewalks were still wet from the rain the night before. By the time we returned, the clouds had too, but we set out on a fresh, clean Easter morning. Just exactly as it should be.


Our destination was Fort Greene Park for Zoe's daily morning romp.




This is a case where a photo can't begin to share the true experience. If I knew how to work the video on my camera (or in this case, my phone...), you'd have been in for a real treat. There was a smile-inducing symphony of people talking and dogs barking and kids yelling that still photos simply can't reproduce.


When we finally headed home, the clouds had rolled back in, but no rain, so our walk was leisurely. These photos are all from within a block of our apartment and on our daily route home.


This is a small Catholic church where the first service of the morning was just beginning. What I couldn't capture was the family (complete with stroller) that had just run up the stairs, the ringing bells or the beautiful spray of full-bloom forsythia right inside the front door. On the railings are sprays of pussy willows tied with rafia.


This is the main entrance to MetroTech Park where our apartment building resides. 


This is the tiny park that is at the end of our street - MetroTech Common. Around the park are office buildings that house (among others) JP Morgan Chase, Empire Blue Cross, the FDNY headquarters and the buildings of NYU Polytech.


 I think these weird signs served as both protection for the trees from the snow plows and artwork. 






I think she's saying: "Enough with the camera already! Can we please go home now?"


Hope you all had a wonderful Easter or Passover.  :-)

Friday, April 22, 2011

Stories not told

Recently my friend Pat and I attended an exhibit of quilts put on by the American Folk Art Museum. Over a cup of tea early that morning, I read that we would see 650 red and white quilts - part of a single woman's collection of over 1,000 red and white quilts. It was almost as hard to imagine looking at 650 quilts of the same colors as it was to imagine collecting them. 


It was breathtaking.




There's a wonderful story behind the exhibit. Joanna Semel Rose started buying quilts at flea markets in the 1950's. Over the years she bought red and white quilts wherever she went and carefully put them away. She had no idea how many quilts she had and hadn't ever seen many of them at the same time. For her 80th birthday, her husband arranged to exhibit her quilts and, as a gift to the city of New York, admission to this exhibit was free. 


Can you imagine how she must have felt when she walked into this huge armory to find herself surrounded by these prized possessions? What memories were stirred as she wandered among them, touching some, gazing up at others?







Sadly, the other six hundred and fifty stories of the exhibit were left untold. "If only they could talk," Pat and I kept saying to each other. "What stories they would tell."


Imagine.