Third in the District

Yesterday, Abby took third place in the District at the Dunbar HS Invitational meet!

Pretty good for a sophomore who never even saw a discus until about three weeks ago, huh?

Update:  Turns out the girls who took first and second place were both seniors!

Astonishing!

Cassie posted the following on Facebook today:

Joe: "Abby, could you please draw Knight Light for me?" 

Two minutes later...

My graddaughter was busy over Christmas break

Bazinga!  Actually, she dashes these stunning watercolors off in nothing flat.

Faces of Christmas morning

View in "full screen"; touch "Esc" to return

Deal!

A business in the area, in need of art with which to decorate its new office space, was alerted to to efforts of a young woman I know well.  The upshot:

• The business has wonderful, colorful, imaginative paintings hanging on its wall
• The young woman has a lot more money in her bank account than previously.

Skating camp, week 1

Abby is fourth from the right as the movie begins.

Skating, 6-8-13

Reading list

E.L. Doctorow and Julian Barnes are two of my favorite novelists.  On those long, long, long flights to and from Turkey (and for a week or two before and after those flight, while sitting on the back deck with a cigar) I read Ragtime (Doctorow) and A history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters (Barnes).  Both were disappointing.  Ragtime -- which I subsequently learned is #86 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century but which, in fact, probably doesn't deserve to be included in a list of the 1,000 best -- is almost boring.  Half of A history of the world is wonderful, with funny, interesting stories marvelously told; the other half is . . . meh.

My absolutely perfect granddaughter, who is suddenly 11 years old, recently read and enjoyed The Watsons go to Birmingham--1963 and The Calder game.  In an attempt to get into the head of a perfect 11-year-old girl, I read them too.  The Watsons is about a fledgling juvenile delinquent from a northern black family who, with the rest of his family, happens to be in Birmingham in the summer of 1963 when the 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed, killing four little girls.  The Calder game is about pre-adolescent friendships, told against a background of modern art, theft, English country life, and the desperate search for a lost boy. Pretty heavy topics for an 11 year old, it seems to me.  When I was 11, I think my books were either A-boy-and-his-dog or How-Billy-won-the-big-game.

Claire Messud's The woman upstairs is very good.  I wonder what it says about me (maybe "Wuss"?) that I can relate to a lot of what goes on in the mind of the protagonist -- a 30-something year old unmarried woman who teaches third-grade.  Whatever it says about me, it clearly says that Claire Messud is a  pretty darned good writer.

I'm only three or four stories into The best American short stories 2012, but from what I've read so far I'd give it at least 4 stars.

Postscript:

Three novels, two kid's books, and a couple short stories spread over two or three months, I realize, isn't a lot of reading -- but it's more than I've read in quite a while..  How to explain it?  Simple: "I love me my Kindle."

A perfect 10!

Abby nails a waltz jump!

My granddaughter, the published (again) artist

Abby focused much more on ice skating than on art this year.  She nevertheless landed the front cover of the Great Falls Connection once again, and four other pieces are included inside the newspaper.

Unfortunately, I don't think the pictures show up so well in the Connection's PDF file.  So, for your viewing enjoyment, here are scans of the relevant pieces.  (Click each for a bigger view.)

RE syllabus

I've pretty much been winging it when I've gone out to Abby's house to do RE with her. I usually talked off the top of my head about the readings for the coming Sunday.

I hope to change. The readings will still be a big part of the sessions, but I'm also hoping to:

• talk to her about the structure of the mass,
• teach her a prayer or two or three -- Lord's prayer, Francis's peace prayer, maybe Niebuhr's serenity prayer,
• maybe go through the Apostle's Creed phrase by phrase,
• talk more about saints, and
• come up with some activity --drawing, puzzle, story telling -- that might make the whole thing a little less like school (or church).

(Not all of these things every week, of course.)

RE

Today's syllabus (composed after the fact):

• God loves us and forgives us for anything we've done if we just want to be forgiven. (If I remember to do it, all of our sessions will begin this way.)
• What's the bible, a book? No! It's a collection of books.
• Is the bible about Jesus? No! Most of it was written hundreds of years before he was born.
• "But Pop Pop,the whole book is about God, and Jesus is God, so the whole book is really about Jesus."
• "Well, um, er, uh, . . . "
• A long discussion of the divinity of Christ. (She's only 9 years old!) I wound up saying that yes, Jesus was always God, but it's as if God said "People just aren't getting it. They don't know what to believe or how to behave." "And Jesus said, "I'll go down and tell them and show them." So Jesus kind of gave up being God for a while. But he gave it up completely! (He kind of became God again because of the way he lived.)
• A discussion of Philippians 2:6-9, which fit perfectly and which, conveniently, is from this Sunday's readings.
• Segue to the story of the first Adam, (Genesis 3:6)
• So the moral of our story is although Adam and Eve messed everything up for everybody Jesus kind of makes everything OK again. It's like we got a whole new do-over.
• "But Pop Pop, there's still sin in the world."
• "Um, er, uh, . . . "

Footnote:  Year A, 26th Sunday of ordinary time

School photo

9, going on 19:

A phone call this morning

[Background: On Easter, Abby agreed to hang out with me on Friday afternoons.]

Hi, Dad. How're you today?

Great, Sweetie. What's up?

I wanted to tell you something sweet Abby said today: Yesterday while she was walking with Ghirgana and Joey they ran into a friend of hers. She and her friend tried to set up a play date for Thursday, but then Abby remembered that she had soccer practice that evening. This morning I said I would phone to try to set up a play date for Friday.

Abby (shaking her head) said "Pop-Pop."

Me: "I'm sure Pop-Pop wouldn't mind if you wanted to meet with your friend that day. He could come out to see you some other day."

Abby (shaking her head): "No. I want to see Pop-Pop."

A memory I'll cherish.

Friday afternoon

Playing "Pick-up Sticks" for 45 minutes can be a lot of fun, IF you're playing with the right person.

The artist in our family

My wonderful granddaughter did it again!

From Eine Kleine Blog

From Eine Kleine Blog

(Click an image for a better view.)

PS The tree on that second tpage is credited to Morvarid Sizdahkhani, but if you'll look at the drawing itself, you'll see that the artist signed it "Abby P." Abby's response to the misattribution? Not, "That's terrible! Why didn't they put my name under that picture?" No. Her response was, "I feel bad for the other kid." What a sweetheart!

Someday I'm going to have to tell you about . . .

. . . recent gallery visits with Abby (who just happens to be the best gallery companion you can imagine).

• Yesterday we investigated the Norman Rockwell show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum -- which I'm convinced should be called the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. We agreed that the best picture in the very disappointing show was "The Connoisseur" and that the best thing about it was the Jackson Pollock-like spatter painting that the hoity-toity connoisseur is standing in front of. Which means, since Pollock was the anti-Rockwell, that the best thing in the show was the least "Rockwell" of them all. (When I mentioned to a friend that the show was disappointing, she wondered "How can anyone be disappointed in a Rockwell show when there is so little doubt about what you should expect to see there?" Good question; I wish I had a good answer.)
  
• A couple weeks ago we had a great time at the National Gallery's Arcimboldo exhibit. The paintings are fascinating. It's easy to imagine this guy painting 50 years ago in New York or Madrid. Much harder to think that he actually painted almost 500 years ago in the court of the Hapsburg emperor. The works are absolutely surreal! Abby loved them. Several of the paintings -- ostensibly renderings of salads or vase of flowers or pot of pork -- can be turned upside down to reveal human portraits. The gallery -- reluctant to let people flip their valuable art work around -- attached them to the wall firmly but placed a mirror in front of them to show the upside-down view. Abby was thrilled with them, but wondered why the mirror was needed. "Look, Pop Pop, all you have to do is come out into the middle of the room and stand on your head, like this!"
• From Arcimboldo, we walked across the hall to glom some prints by Edvard Munch. After seeing about 20 of them, Abby tugged on my sleeve and whispered, "Did he do 'The Scream'?" I was surprised that she had even heard of "The Scream," and I was absolutely flabbergasted that somehow she recognized some similarity in style or technique or something in both "The Scream" and the prints we were viewing.
• On the way out of the gallery that day -- after hot dogs and sodas -- we walked past a lot of late 19th and early 20th century art. She casually identified the Picassos as we walked past. At least twice I had to say, "I don't know, Abby, I don't recognize that one; let me just go over and check the card . . . Um, er, yeah, Abby, you're right. That is another Picasso."

. . . our "Autumn in New York" adventure. Our very touristy "Autumn in New York" adventure, also known as "Darby and Joan visit the Big Apple":

• Our bus carried us from Key Bridge to Penn Station on Monday, the 15th, whence a 15 minute walk took us to our hotel, the AKA Times Square. (Thanks, Zarguna!) After checking in: lunch at a deli across the street, a half-mile or so stroll up Broadway and then over to 6th Ave. and back to the hotel to plan the evening. (Monday night is not the easiest time to find something to do in New York.) We settled on Katherine Jenkins performing at City Winery (no, we'd never heard of her either, but some YouTube videos convinced us she might be worth listening to) . She was OK, nothing more, and we left at intermission, but the evening was still a grand success because sitting at the bar, nursing a "Chivas with a little ice", I felt for all the world like Peter Gunn listening to Lola Albright perform all those years ago. (The link in this paragraph shows the beginning of a performance Ms. Jenkins gave in Dusseldorf; ours began exactly the same way.)
• Tuesday: Bryant Park with its ice-skating pond and then Grand Central Terminal, in both of which, colorful holiday art/craft/gift shows were being held, then the United Nations building, lunch at a greasy spoon, and back to the hotel to relax a bit and make plans for the evening before heading out for our afternoon explorations. As for the evening, we decided on "The Divine Sister" at the SoHo Playhouse; the show had received a good review in the Times and Times readers had given it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. In fact the play was awful. Make that AWFUL! Fart jokes, for God's sake! Remarkably, although the play was AWFUL, it didn't put us in a foul mood, and I thought it might be fun to wander around a little looking for a neighborhood bar where we could listen to some music, but when we came out of the theater, the skies had opened up, so we just headed back to the hotel and drank a little wine. But I've gotten ahead of myself. After relaxing at the hotel and buying tickets for that AWFUL play, we walked to the Empire State Building and elevatored to the 86th floor observation deck. Neither of us had been there since we were kids. I came away with a strengthened belief that tall things are much more impressive when viewed from the bottom looking up than they are from the top looking down. But I'm still ahead of myself: On our way to the ESB, we took a little time to walk through the NY Public Library building on 5th Avenue; very cool.
• Wednesday: Subway to Lincoln Center (we'd never seen it), walk across Central Park, spend several hours wandering through the Metropolitan Museum, take an exciting taxi ride back to the hotel, and stroll back down to Penn Station for the ride home.
• Summary: A lovely three days!
• PS I'm coming more and more to the opinion that traveling in the off-season is the only way to travel. The weather be damned, I just want to avoid crowds. And we had no line -- none -- at the ESB; in Paris a couple years ago (also off-season) we found almost no line at the Louvre. The Metropolitan Museum did have a good number of people in it, but the information desk told us that it was not nearly as crowded as during tourist season.

. . . why you should never pay extra for expedited shipping.

• I ordered a new keyboard and mouse from Buy.com and chose "budget shipping" (free, but delivery would take 7 - 9 days) instead of "standard shipping" ($7, with delivery in 4 - 5 days). The keyboard arrived at our front door the very next day.

Flyin' high!

Abby and Roger, that is. And Abby and Cassie.

Click an image for a bigger picture.

Abby is sooooooo lucky!

Artist and model

Click the image for a bigger view.

Abby and her new friend Alex at Surfside Beach, SC.

Best ever!

Click the image for a bigger one.