VT (for all of my design-obsessed peeps)

Barrier Reef of Belize photocourtesysportsdiver.com Peeps, While working with the landscape crew in the garden today, I could not help reflecting on the ironies of the times.   Cynics, critics, skeptics, and others who deny the effects of global warning would need to simply venture from the cooled comfort of their homes and offices, and into the 102F plus temperature presently experienced by our region in order to experience the precursor of the inevitable.   It is alarming when native grasses, rose-of-sharon shrubs, and catmint start to wilt under the stressors of extreme heat and the lack of rain.   Water can be quite costly, and in some states and counties ration quotas and schedules are in effect; it seems almost inhuman to run the sprinkler on a suburban lawn in the pursuit of some ideal of lawn perfection, knowing that the general populace of many African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries faces dehydration and starvation.   A very cruel ...

photocourtesyofjjjjound.blog Peeps, As is customary, during the month of August the theatre remains dark.  We will reopen on September 5 with the peepshow entitled:  5 COOL AMERICANS.  Our blog will be featuring weekend visual treats provided by guest writers and a series of remixed vintage treats.  If you not already done so, please sign up for email notifications, so you can enjoy all the additional fun. Thanks, Shane PS:  Got a call from Bernice, our editor who has been on vacation in Syracuse.  It seems that I keep missing the typos, as well as forgetting to water her potted plants on the window-sill.  Last evening's visual treat devoted to the Victory Garden had two boo-boos in the narrative, which were:   'also means less of the grocery budget gets to stay at home,' should have read: 'also means more of the grocery budget gets to stay at home.'  Also,  'Not to mention the pickers and pickers who endure something j...

imagecourtesydinnergarden.org Peeps, The Victory Garden that Mom or Grandma carefully tended is probably not there any longer; nevertheless the underlying principle still remains, and with the increased emphasis on sustainability, nutrition, and quality of life, items such as tomato cages runner-bean tepees, and potted herbs have become almost commonplace in many cities and towns.  Sure, I admit that driving down a quiet tree-lined suburban street of manicured front lawns, pristine-white picket fences, and the requisite clematis climbing up the mail-box post (or street lamp) is enjoyable, nevertheless the site of corn and artichokes plants carefully and skillfully integrated within a perennial bed of peonies, boxwood, and shrub roses, quickens my pulse for here is someone who ‘gets it.’  ‘Getting it’ for myself and many others means finally realizing how easy it is to convert a small area of a suburban yard or garden plot into something which provides hours of enjoyment...

photocourtesyalnwickgarden Peeps, I am shocked and saddened at the death of Amy Winehouse; it seems quite surreal that all that remains of this particular individual’s life are the images we experienced electronically, shared moments in the attendance of a live performance, or the singular bewitching voice which pierced through our consciousness thereby forcing us to understand her—as well as our-- need to feel, to risk, to love, to live.   Brilliantly and mischievously, she made not being good, devilishly good.   She will be missed. She will be simultaneously missed and remembered for both on and off stage performances; there is no denying her incredible talent, yet lately this had been clouded by public incidents of the loss of control attributed to drugs and alcohol, both poisons to which much caution must be attached.   It is argued that the substances (or the base materials) in themselves are quite benign, and only in application does any danger arise.   I...

RyoanjiZenGardenJapan photocouresyvirtualtourist.com   Peeps,    Kind and wonderful persons in my life have made me quite aware of the challenges faced by many individuals in our society.  The blind and visually-impaired and the manner in which they negotiate through the maze of obstructions, hazards, challenges, and limitations--as well as biases and prejudices on the part of others-- has always interested me.  Probably the idea of losing my eyesight fills me with some fear, and as an artist and writer I strive try to understand how the lack of information provided by the sense of sight forces optimization of the other senses, which for the simple reason of survival must move quickly to complete a person's individual consciousness vis-a-vis the perceived world outside our body. Vision provides the brain with information of a large object moving towards us, this combined with the sound of a angry car's horn and compounded with the feel of a swoosh near our...

RooftopGarden/ChicagoCityHall photocourtesplantizen.com   Peeps, Last week we experienced the hottest days of the summer so far; even zinnias and straw-flowers, two of the sturdiest heat-tolerant annuals and proven summer stalwarts, showed signs of duress. I confess to having a tentative relationship with annuals of which I find some to be a tad riotous; at times the Carmen Miranda color hues are sometimes difficult to integrate into the soft palette offered by pink phlox, white roses, Wintergreen boxwood, lace-cap hydrangeas, and the softly rounded mounds of spirea--all much favored by my employer.  Although nothing can quite compare to the intensity of color offered by French marigolds, petunias, geraniums, rex begonias, and coleus, especially when the continuous heat has driven the remainder of the garden into shutdown-mode. Duncan at Merrifield Gardens wisely notes: it is not the plant, it's the placement, so give it a second look; over the years I h...

Landscape#15/WalterHelena imagecourtesywaltherhelena.com                                   I would not sing you to sleep.  I would press my lips to your ear  and hope the terror in my heart stirs you.                                                Lullaby This week's peep-show is dedicated to the memory of Reetika Vazarani.

Gorille/WaltonFord courtesysheridantursanblog Peeps, Day 4 of our peep-show dedicated to TEXT + IMAGE continues with the master essayist of our age, the premier man of letters, and without hesitation, my all-time favorite --Gore Vidal, who wrote:             Obviously, there is a great deal wrong with our educational system, as President Reagan recently, and rather gratuitously, noted.  After all, an educated electorate would not have elected him president.  It is generally agreed that things started to go wrong with schools after the First World War.  The past was taught less and less, and Latin and Greek ceased to be compulsory.  Languages were either not taught or taught so badly that they might just as well not have been taught at all, while American history books grew more and more mendacious, as Frances FitzGerald so nicely described ( America Revised , 1979), and even basic geography i...

SallyMann/JessewithDeer imagecourtesyartnet.com Peeps, It's day three of the peep-show devoted to TEXT + IMAGE, and today we feature narrative from The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, one of the most important young writers in world literature. Edmund White notes that this historical novel "Recalls Garcia Marquez . . . magical touches dance like highlights over the brilliance of this fairy tale about passion, gambling, madness, and androgynous ecstasy."  I could not agree more, and the author and her entire oeuvre remain high on my list of all-time pleasurable reads.   Winterson writes, ' I was happy but happy is an adult word.  You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it.  They are or they are not.  Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not.  Talking about it is as the same as trying to catch the wind.  Much easier to let it blow all over you. This is where I disagree with the philosophers.  They talk about pass...

Exiled/LuisCruzAzaceta courtesyTumiamiblog Peeps, Today, the peep-show dedicated to text + image continues with a painting entitled Exiled by Luiz Cruz Azaceta paired with Cuban writer extraordinaire Reinaldo Arenas, who wrote: One of the first things that I ever did in life was to eat dirt.  My first crib was a hole in the dirt, dug by my grandmother.  In that hole, which was waist-deep, I learned to stand up.  My grandmother had used the same technique with all her children; stuck in that hole, I would crawl around on the dirt floor.  Later I would throw dirt against the wall, and one of my solitary diversions was to build mud castles.  I would mix dirt with water that I had fetched from the distant well.  A favorite game for me and my cousins was to throw dirt at one another.  To dig out the earth was to discover unusual treasures like pieces of colored glass, snail shells, and shards of pottery.  To water the earth and see how i...

imagecourtesyjjjjound.blog Peeps, I believe that the dog days of summer are upon us.  Both Lady Emblom and I agreed today that so much watering must be done in order to ensure the slightest degree of lushness, and the petunia borders in her garden absorb water faster than papyrus or reeds.  This week promises to be blistering hot on quite a number of days; I intend to stay shuttered in my basement lair, only emerging at dusk to witness the playful dance of fireflies in the long narrow passage between the towering laurel bushes and the neighbor's privacy fence, which I humorously call Fern Walk due to a profusion of ferns, bergenias, and variegated euonymous.    I frequently encounter the phrase 'a good picture is worth a thousand words.  Wikipedia states  that  the adage " A picture is worth a thousand words" refers to the idea that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the...

photocourtesyoflulalola.com Peeps, This week's peep-show ends today with the clothespin; if you do not recognize this object, it may be for a variety of reasons.  Chances are that you have never shopped at an old-fashioned hardware store(s) (like Cherrydale Hardware in Arlington, VA or Brown's Hardware in Falls Church, or a variety of others where the mom-and-pop business model is real/nurtures community spirit/provides individualized service unmatched by the big-box stores where help is generally non-existent, and the few good employees who show up after the training period is completed, usually crumble from over-exhaustion and excessive responsibility so that at the first chance they leave for greener pastures; yes, in spite of the so-called benefits and retirement plan.  Only a 501 or 601K could have kept them coming back week after week). Another reason for not recognizing the humble clothespin may be that you are not truly a design-addict like some fashion and inte...

phorocourtesy3-dArt Peeps, The theme of this week's visual treat is 'Everyday Objects of Extraordinary Design,' and the spoon is our featured object today.  It seems that yesterday's posting which was devoted to the mirror (or looking glass) surprised many new visitors to our blog, as well as some veteran peeps who may have been wondered at the quite liberal creative license I took in composing the narrative.  I sincerely believe that acknowledgment and inclusion of our differences ultimately shapes the manner in which one's image in the mirror is initially perceived and then embraced. In addition to being creatures of habit, we communicate and construct our world through our senses, of which vision/sight is critically essential (or we learn to depend on the other senses which for our continued survival must be honed to a finer degree of sensitivity for receiving and transmitting information to the brain).  If we see someone like us, that makes us more comfo...

photocourtesygilygily.com Peeps, Today's visual treat, of a boy examining his reflection in the mirror, says so much .  For some at 11 or 12, maybe 13 or 14, the person staring back at you from the mirror is not the person you had expected to see, or wanted to be.  The body starts stretching itself, as well as adding bulk to a frame which will gradually evolve into the man or woman whose chances of being smart, pretty/handsome, successful, passionate, disciplined, talented, and so forth are a combination of genes, environment, and pure luck.  Equally possible are the chances of being a slouch/sloth/slut/spud/spade/ sod and so forth; however to mitigate and prevent this unwanted personal development which adds very little to the quality of one's life, most concerned parents usually step in and do the wonderful and sometimes thankless job called parenting which they vowed to undertake somewhere between conception and your birth.  Yet some kids regardless of th...

photocourtesythealteredartstore.com Peeps, Last week's visual treats devoted to Haute Couture inspired by flora elicited many responses from readers.  This one was particularly moving:  We had a tiny old lady seamstress that would make clothes for us in Lebanon, it gave me a chance to be my own dress designer for lots less than off the rack. Sadly, Rosa was hit by a shell during the 20 yrs. war & died. She was such a cute little old lady, & made her living with her ancient talented hands! Today's visual treat is the brown paper-bag, an everyday object of extraordinary design, and hopefully an object which will be utilized in even greater numbers as we question our actions  and values, more closely examine our decisions, and become more socially and environmentally conscious.  Can we ask more of ourselves, our systems of commerce, transportation and production, as well as task our elected and appointed systems of governance and representation with p...