Premier of President Obama’s primo first 100 days

Premiere: n. First in occurrence; first showing; highest importance

Primo: adj. of exceptional quality, first class, kickass

Al Rodgers has assembled a fantastic collection of photographs and accomplishments from President Obama’s first 100 days in office.  It’s not to miss.  Some of the pictures move me to tears.

And what his administration has accomplished so far is mind-boggling, given the radioactive garbage dump Bush and Cheney left us with.

YES WE CAN!

Party-pooping patriots: the Texas GOP

Party-pooper: n. A person who ruins a party by either stopping the fun or not participating in a certain activity

Patriot: n. One who loves, supports, and defends one’s country

The Texas Republican party is such a joke. Half of them love America so much that now the Democrats are in charge they want to take their marbles and go home.  Markos’ post was so priceless today that I give you the whole thing:

We now know that half of Texas’ Republicans want to secede from the United States.  So I have some questions for that crowd:

• Are you flying an American flag? Because you don’t get to do that when you cry and take your ball home.

• Do you have a bumper sticker that says, “These colors don’t run”? Because it sure looks like you’re running.

• Do you still pretend that your party is the “Party of Lincoln”? If so, what part of Lincoln exactly, would that be?

• Since you’ve spent the last eight years saying “America, love it or leave it”, is that an admission that you don’t love America? Because we liberals loved it and stayed, even when your idiot of a president was trashing the place.

• Was your patriotism (My country, right or wrong) so skin-deep, that it depended 100 percent on the guy in the White House?

• That $200 billion Texas got in defense contracts between 2000 and 2007? No more of that. No more Ft. Hood. No more NASA. No more federal largesse. You okay with that?

You do realize that the Cowboys will no longer be “America’s Team”, right? Though they’d dominate the two-team Texas Football League (TFL).

Petals

Petals: n. part of the corolla of a flower, often brightly colored.

My tulips are spectacular right now. Here they are amassed:

Tulips - mainly Daydream & Silverstream - (anenomes behind)

And here are some petals that fell off a tired arrangement:

Performance

Performance: n. the execution of an action; a public presentation

Gotta love this seemingly  impromptu song and dance number at the train station in Antwerp.  And Julie Andrews’  voice still gives me chills.

At least this made a big enough splash to get passersby attention. When Joshua Bell played in a Washington Metro station last year, very few even turned their heads! Unbelievable – he’s one of the world’s finest vioinists.

Prepositions: a poem

Preposition: n. a function word that typically comes before a noun phrase to form a modifying phrase – examples: with, for, up, in out, of, beside

I always loved grammar, especially diagramming sentences. It made the language so orderly.

Thanks to Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac, which arrives in my inbox every day, I learned about  humorist and biographer Morris Bishop, born this day in 1893, who wrote a poem about prepositions.

[Bishop] was a brilliant scholar, fluent in German, Swedish, French, Spanish, Latin, and modern Greek. He wrote biographies of Pascal, Champlain, La Rochefoucauld, Petrarch, and St. Francis. But we remember him best as the author of light verse, such as this:

I lately lost a preposition:
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair.
And angrily I cried: “Perdition!
Up from out of in under there!”

Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor;
And yet I wondered: “What should he come
Up from out of in under for?”

Possessed by possessions: P-post #366!

Possessed: adj. influenced or controlled by something (as an evil spirit, a passion, or an idea)

Possession: n. something owned, occupied, or controlled; property

With this morning’s post I have proffered and probed 365 words beginning with P.  365 P-words may seem like a plethora, but really it’s a paltry potpourri; I’ve barely penetrated the pregnant possibilities P-words provide.

You could say I’ve been possessed by P. Although I will continue to post here, it won’t be so regularly because I have a pressing priority: dealing with my Possessions.

I’ve got to get rid of about half my stuff so I can sell this house and move to a smaller place.  But, I’m not going away.  I’ve started another WordPress blog – on downsizing, cataloging the process of Getting to Less.

I hope that some of you will join me over at Getting to Less. Advice, moral support and tips from your own experience always welcome. Maybe you’ve got ideas about selling art? antiques? Dealing with boxes of photos, big honking scrapbooks.  Aaaagh.

The blog is a bit sparse so far… I’ve edited and moved over about 20 former P-posts that seemed on topic (so if you read a post that seems strangely familiar; it is – like I’m using this post title but the content is different).

Soon the material will be All New!

Perfume, bye-bye!

Perfume: n. a substance that emits a pleasant odor; a fluid preparation of natural essences or synthetics and a fixative used for scenting; fragrance

This is embarrassing. I just tossed two bottles of perfume that have sat on my bureau or bathroom counter for decades.

I haven’t worn perfume in decades. (Except for the fabulous essential oil fragrances my son created – and just discontinued – at Jimmyjane.)

The bottle of Joy has been with me since the boat trip I took across the Atlantic (Quebec to Le Havre) right after college. A dashing member of the German crew gave it to me as a momento of our brief but torrid shipboard romance. (My name is Joy and that was a very popular and expensive fragrance at the time).

As you might imagine, the fragrance in the bottles bore no resemblance to what the perfumiers originally bottled.  So why did I not discard them years ago???

Well – they were gifts with special memories attached. They were small. And you never know… I just might want to wear a dab some time….

This morning the veil fell from my eyes. I emptied the bottles down the sink and put the empties into the recycle bin.

It felt like a major victory.

Woo-woo postscript from yoga class later in the morning. Our teacher has two little baskets from which we can draw random words on which to focus in class – one contains round river rocks and the other contains cards (with words in English and Sanskrit). You can use the words as areas to focus your intention for the class, if you want.   From the middle of the pile in each basket I drew (not peeking) a rock that said “Joy” and a card that said “Joy.”   The dharma talk at the beginning of class centered on vairagya, learning to let go of attachments.  Oh yeah.

Presidential Pooch is Portuguese! (water dog)

Presidential: adj. of or relating to the President

Pooch: n. affectionate slang for dog

Portuguese: adj. from the country of Portugal

Today’s biggest news story (apart from the rescue of the captain from the Somali pirates…)

The Obama family got its dog – a Portuguese Water Dog they’ve named “Bo,” after Bo Diddley. Rumor has it that the president is already calling him “Diddley.”

One wag suggested calling him “Bark Obama”…

Portuguese Water Dog puppy - cute or what???

Bo is six months old and comes from the same kennel that supplies Teddy Kennedy with pooches – in fact he’s a gift from Teddy.

I’m a poodle person myself, but I can certainly see the charm in this dog.  Poodles, however, have shaved faces and feet, which cut way down on tracked in mud and food-caked mustaches.

Fun times!

Peacock picnic in the Columbia River Gorge

Peacock: n. the national bird of India, related to the pheasant. The male peafowl, or peacock, has long been valued for its brilliant tail feathers. The bright spots on it are known as “eyes”, and inspired the Greek myth that Hera placed the hundred eyes of her slain giant Argus on the tail of her favorite bird.

Picnic: n. a pleasure excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors

Peacock's personal table

I spent the entire day exploring the spectacular Columbia River Gorge with four friends. We left the gray weather behind in Vancouver and drove 100 miles east to the the Maryhill Museum of Art.

This former mansion of tycoon Sam Hill was built in 1907  on a hilltop overlooking the Gorge near Goldendale, WA. He bought 5300 acres of land there in the hope of establishing a Quaker community, but it never really caught on.  His buddies – the avant garde dancer Loie Fuller and Queen Marie of Roumania – convinced him instead to convert the place into a museum.

Fuller was friends with Auguste Rodin, so there is a sizeable collection of Rodin sculptures and sketches. His collection of Indian basketry is impressive, and other exhibits come thru regularly.

I was taken by the gorgeous gilt furnishings from Queen Marie:

Queen Marie's throne

Queen Marie's table

But I digress. After museuming we went outside for our picnic with the peacocks.

I couldn’t get over the stunning colors… like jewels. In one direction the tail looks coppery, in another green, in another silver.

Peacock's back

Tail - silvery angle

Our next stop was the replica Sam Hill built of StoneHenge, to honor local soldiers who died in World War I.

Center area of Sam Hill's Stonehenge

Columbia River from Stonehenge

The Gorge isn’t as steep near Maryhill as it is closer to Portland, where the east side of the Columbia boasts some wonderful waterfalls. We stopped and hiked up one, gawked at others from below.  So much beauty on all sides!!

I think the Gorge is one of America’s most awesome scenic treasures. It’s 80 miles long and in some places the walls rise 4000 feet!

Pure pleasure: artist’s date at Tacoma Museum of Glass

Pure: adj. being thus and no other; unmixed with any tainting substance

Pleasure: n. a state of gratification; a source of delight and joy

Part of ceiling on Glass Bridge by Dale Chihuly

To celebrate my birthday, my best friend took me up to Tacoma on Friday for an “artist’s date,” a concept introduced by Julia Cameron in her best-seller, The Artist’s Way.

An artist’s date is when you take time out from your ordinary life and usual artistic pursuits to do expose yourself to or participate in some other creative endeavor for the sheer pleasure of it.

An artist’s date can be as simple as dumping your button collection onto a table and playing with them. If you’re a writer, you could go into the yard and attempt to sketch a flower. If you’re an artist you could immerse yourself in a book of poetry.

Or it could be a real museum outing, as Judi and I  did Friday.

Tacoma is a two hour drive from here.  To get to the Museum from the parking lot, you cross over the highway on the magical Bridge of Glass, designed by the wildly creative glass artist Dale Chihuly.

On one side of the enclosed mid-section is a wall of crazy “vases”.  The roof  looks like someone dumped the three-dimensional phantasmagorical contents of a dozen super-sized kaleidoscopes onto a glass plate above you.

The glass pieces vary in size from balls about 4″ in diameter to trumpet shapes 3′ long and scalloped “flowers” 2′-4′ across.  The shimmering backlit shapes of brilliant colors can only be called ecstatic art. I could have permanently cricked my neck taking it all in.

Here is some more:

Chihuly ceiling closer view

Here’s a portion of  the side wall:

A family in front of the wall of Chihuly "vases"

Looking up at one of the two glass spires on first part of the Bridge. The chunks are BIG, like 2-3′ across:

Here’s a Chihuly chandelier:

The museum has much more than Chihuly, including a huge glass-blowing shop, where you can watch art glass being blown. There’s a terrific exhibit about describing glass art, beyond “I like it; I don’t like it” but you can’t take photos inside. (This exhibit closes in November; worth the trip if you live close enough.)

This is a museum for kids of all ages, and it’s in a part of town with two other fine museums, the handsome U. Washington Tacoma campus, the refurbished train station (now courthouse) with an enormous arched window with orange Chihuly “poppies” floating across it.

Closeup of Chihuly poppy window

Can you tell I LOVED this place???

And PS – we ate lunch in the museum cafe: YUMMMMMMY.