Having broken down and gotten a cell-phone in deference to the fact that pay-phones are now either extinct or in such poor health that they barely work, I tried taking some pictures with it.
Woodstove with blazing fire March 4 2011
Cheese Scallion Drop Biscuits 1
Cheese Scallion Drop Biscuits 2
Cheese Scallion Drop Biscuits 3
Cheese Scallion Drop Biscuits 4
Denise Ron and Terry with their Mom Dress Up at Chimneys
While at the Mason Music Festival yesterday, I took a couple of pictures of the statue of Bode, a black slave from Massachusetts who tended cattle in Mason New Hampshire during colonial times and was apparently the first non-Native permanent resident of the western part of what is now New Hampshire (the eastern coastal part was settled by European fishermen long before the Mayflower landed).
Bode’s existence was discovered and made famous by children’s writer and illustrator Elizabeth Orton Jones, a.k.a. “Twig”, whom I was privileged to know in her last few years. Local sculptor Liz Fletcher made the staute in 2008, and the town placed it in a green space behind the library, one of Twig’s favorite haunts.
It’s been an eventful Summer, and there is so much to write about that I tend to hesitate and not start. I really want to comment on our visit to the MacDowell Colony two weeks ago and the many moving experiences Denise and I had in our short visit there. This entry is cross-posted (in a slightly altered form) from my LiveJournal blog. I hope to post more explanatory material about the more obscure images in the video later.
Marion MacDowell
The MacDowell Colony was started by the Marion MacDowell, the wife of the composer Edward MacDowell in the first decade of the twentieth century on a large piece of rural land on in Peterborough, New Hampshire. An endowment was established to provide creative retreats for artists and writers working in all media and genres. Once accepted as a MacDowell Fellow, during their stay at the Colony, their living lodging and food, along with basic supplies are provided, and they have the option to spend as much or as little time as they choose working on their projects in solitude. Each day a breakfast, lunch and dinner is delivered to their studio, unless they have left word that they would prefer to dine in the main building and be social. The studios are unique little cabins located on trails and dirt roads among the woodlands and meadows of the Colony. Outside visitors to the Colony are discouraged, so as not to distract the artists, but on one day each yer since 1960, the August Medal Day has been an exception. Everybody is invited to have a picnic on the lawn, listen to the presentation ceremony of the Medal, hear some music, and wander around the grounds meeting the artists.
The MacDowell Colony Main Building
Picnic on the MacDowell Grounds, Jazz Trio Playing in the Tent
Saguaro carrot appeared one morning,
hoping nobody noticed.
Am I a little too ghostly?
Did I get the color wrong?
(Photo modified from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coyote_Mountain.jpg, by Florian Boyd, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. This modified photo is herewith licensed for distribution on the same terms as the original.)
Someone in Franklin, NH had a great idea about what to do with limbs knocked down in last year’s ice-storm. Why not make a snake? This snake was on display at last month’s New Hampshire Peace Action gathering. The music is just me strumming on my dulcimer.
Heading home from a long two-day conference, I chanced upon these two golden sculptures on Boston Common. Much to my surprise, when someone put money in their golden basket, they came to life. Ah, the magic of the money economy! Money is now so embedded in our souls that we refuse to live without it 
We are used to seeing flocks of male and female wild turkeys around here, but this was something different – peahens (that’s female peacocks, I guess). They came up to our doorstep and pecked on the door, so I looked out and saw them disappearing around the woodshed. A neighbor who was driving by stopped, backed up his truck and asked “Are those yours?”. I said no. A little while later they were back and I was able to get a camera and follow them around a little while. They were brave, even brazen, and my cat reacted to their presence with indignation rather than predatory behavior.
My daughter recently posted a few photos from the New Hampshire winter on her LiveJournal blog. I love the red-squirrel collage! Red squirrels don’t try to move into our rafters, and they are polite and tolerant, unlike the grey squirrels. We could learn a lot from them.
Here’s a link to a gazillion photographs taken at the Grassroots Radio Festival, courtesy of Dan Toomey
