Past Blogs

We are surrounded by a giant cocoon of green. The April showers did not materialize this year, but the June deluges did. Every leaf and plant is jumping up for joy and pumping out more chlorophyll.

Our ferns grew four inches last week, the fur trees are furry with new growth and the field of oats across the road is, in Conrad Richter’s words, “a sea of grass” – a very green sea I may add.

When friends from desert regions visit us, their first comment about our state is,”it’s so green”. Out West the green segregates itself: the emerald band of cottonwoods and vegetation along the river banks, the pines and aspens in the mountains. Tans and browns fill in the rest.

Our total greenness is not the least bit monotonous. The painter, Henri Rousseau, used 100 shades of green in one of his jungle paintings. Our landscapes can rival that. I cannot begin to count the varieties of green that surround me every time I drive or walk through the countryside now.

We all know that this dense green beauty is ephemeral. Orange, red and yellow pigments are lurking inside the green leaves ready to proclaim the end of the summer party. These precious few weeks are the time to stock up on green….the memories must last for endless winter days painted in shades of gray.

“I have a wonderful fairytale for you today. It takes place in a magical forest and was written by a guy named William Shakespeare.”

These words introduced my last art class of the school year. The first and second graders would be drawing scenes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Fortunately, I did not have to reduce the bard’s 87 page play to kid size. Lisl Weil in her charming book, Donkey Head, supplied the child friendly synopsis. For illustrations, I used the elegantly detailed illustrations of Arthur Rackham and Kevin Maddison.

The classes loved the characters instantly: the bickering Queen Titania and King Oberon, the mischief maker Puck (a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow), the bad actor Nick Bottom and his donkey head and the fairies named Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Cobweb and Moth.

I encouraged the children to draw their favorite scenes and characters. The various classes and teachers were free to experiment with art media of their choice. When the artwork was completed, I said, “You can now do something I ALMOST NEVER let you do. You can add glitter to your picture.”

June 21, Midsummer, is fast approaching. Go out and make some magic happen.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
—Oberon describes Titania’s bower, where she sleeps.

Garden centers are dangerous places. Put me in a shoe store, jewelry store or art gallery, and I have sales resistance. Nurseries, however, are gardens of temptation. Those plants sing siren songs to me.

Who doesn’t want their yard to look like a photo shoot from Sunset Magazine? The fact that I know I’m a bad gardener is absolutely no deterrent. Garden centers exude hope from every leaf and bloom, and I’m buying in….literally.

That cute little wagon they let you borrow doesn’t help matters either. It’s fun to pull it up and down the damp paths through rows of lush plants. Naturally, it looks better filled with flowers.

Nurseries are epicenters of instant gratification. Someone else has guided these plants through the birth, baby and teen years. The racks of seed packets at my local Fleet Farm can’t possibly compete. I know those seeds won’t turn out to look like the pictures on their packages. And I will wait a long time for them to sprout and go spindly.

So off to the garden center we go. My husband is as much of a plant junkie as I am. We quickly fill the coaster wagon with hopes and dreams of Eden. The only saving factor is our cars. They are both pint sized. Sheer space limits our flower frenzy.

On September 30, 2014, I published a blog about New Jersey. (“Jersey” in the archives.) I’ve recently discovered a vitally important fact about the Garden State that I omitted. An update is in order.

For seventy years, New Jersey by law has prohibited self serve gas. The only other state with a similar law is Oregon where the ban is currently being repealed. New Jersey will be the last bastion of full service pumps.

A recent poll of Jersey residents found 63 % in favor of the no self serve law. The issue appears to be a sacred cow to the population.

Proponents of self serve bring the issue up in the legislature, but can’t get traction. Assemblyman Declan J. O’Scanlon says, “Nobody can make a sound argument why we should not allow this. The only way to win that argument is if you can make a legitimate argument that New Jerseyans are more flammable than other people.”

To arguments that repeal would be a burden on the elderly and people who cannot reach the pumps,  O’Scanlon quips, “do they have no senior citizens in other states, no short people?”

New Jersey residents know that rational arguments are irrelevant. They want this little luxury, this special treatment and this distinction. And they are street smart enough to know if they give full serve up, they will never get it back.

The next time I’m standing in the rain, wind and cold, fumbling with a smelly gas hose, I will be exuding envy of those Jersey drivers who get to say, “Fill er up!”

I’ve just finished another year of Art in a Suitcase programs. One overriding thing made all these years possible….curiosity. My curiosity was the catalyst that started the adventure, and the curiosity of thousands of children and their parents has allowed it to flourish.

When I began teaching art many years ago, I frequently had my young artists draw, paint or sculpt animals. Somewhere along the way, I felt a need to expand the lessons to give the children a few science facts about the animals and habitats they were portraying. My curiosity was sparked as well, and I quickly became hooked on the natural sciences.

Art in a Suitcase was the result. In hindsight, a more appropriate name should have been Art and Science in a Suitcase. (Since this is a mouthful, I decided to keep the original name intact.)

The curiosity of children is a never-ending source of joy. Almost all the young people I work with want to learn. If I throw out a few facts about the planets, Komodo dragons, fireflies, oceans, sharks, volcanoes, the Arctic or any other topic found in a natural history museum, hands shoot up to ask questions.

When I do encounter children with an attitude that announces, “I dare you to say anything that interests me”,  I know that something has gone terribly wrong in their young lives. Paradoxically, I’ve noted that these children are most often from homes with a shocking lack of material resources or an egregious abundance of them.

Our current educational system in America is not focused on the power of curiosity. The emphasis on testing and grades trumps all else. We need to bring back the wonder.

Historian David McCullough, a two time Pulitzer Prize winner, succinctly notes, “Curiosity is what separates us from the cabbages. It’s accelerative. The more we know, the more we want to know.”