Lingering at my sister Lisa’s dining room table this evening after dinner, my eye drifted to this casserole on a shelf opposite. My memories of childhood are vague, and I often depend on Lisa for the sort of specifics I can’t quite grab hold of. But neither of us could remember the casserole’s story, other …
We’ve got some cool jewelry in the household thanks to Nora Reed’s work. You might like some too: I’ve always had a thing for swirls and black and white patterns. This high-contrast piece combines soft mother-of-pearl white with a few kinds of black and white beads; the colors echo themselves throughout it to create a …
I sat for a really long time with my Dad Sunday afternoon. His labored breathing was like a metronome, a weird combination of great labor and steady rhythm. His eyes were vacantly half open, and it’s reasonable to assume (I did at the time) that he had no idea I was there. It was lunchtime, …
Once, while a young teen, I spotted a house on fire while dad was driving me home from my bassoon lesson. I alerted the residents, who were unaware that their roof had caught fire. It was a relatively modest fire, and firefighters were able to quickly extinguish it without major damage to the house or …
My sister, Lisa, found a box of Dad’s old postcards over the weekend, including a number he had sent during a trip out west in 1946. He’d just gotten out of the Army, a Pennsylvania kid wandering the landscape that would later animate his art and become our home. There was this, to his parents …
Continue reading ‘Boulder Dam, circa 1946: “a lot of propoganda for Daddy to read”’ »
Sept. 30 is the end of the “water year”*, and it’s been another dry one at the Heineman-Fleck house. With data back to the 1999-2000 year now, this is the fourth consecutive dry year relative to my personal long term mean here in Albuquerque’s near northeast heights: * Water managers here usually (though not for …
The bird in Regent’s Park seemed goose-like enough. But too small, and with the dark and light bits in the wrong places. I grabbed my pocket guide. “Unlike much larger Canada Goose, black extends over breast and body is grey (not brown).” Ah yes, the Barnacle goose. Check. In London’s Underground, a cheery female voice …
Sometime during the mid-1970s, when I was a young teenager, Dad took us to see a Mark Rothko retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I must be cautious here in recalling the extent to which I was moved by a beginning-to-end look at the Russian-American painter’s work. “What you end up remembering,” …
Water draws me: There are no “rivers” proper in the part of Southern California where I grew up. Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to water. Or maybe it’s just part of the human condition? I can imagine an evolutionary benefit to being drawn to water. Whatever. Wherever I am, I end up walking to …
My favorite stop on our California desert vacation was the strange and wonderful little Moorten Botanical Garden “in the heart of Palm Springs”. Between the golf courses and the ill-advised decision to try to coax palm trees out of their desert oasis canyons (they take a lot of water – per capita use here is …