Past Blogs

In Asia it is the Year of the Dragon, but where we live, it is The Year of the Turkey. Our yard and the fields and roadsides around us are bristling with wild turkeys. Yesterday, five of them spent a pleasant afternoon having an extended lunch in The Tooley Cafe.

We are delighted to host these big birds, the largest game birds in North America. It’s no wonder that a young relative on seeing wild turkeys for the first time exclaimed, “Look at the little dinosaurs.” A 20 pound, 4 foot long bird with 5,500 feathers is an imposing sight. I confess to laughing when I read this note in my bird book, “This bird is distinctive and unlikely to be confused with others.”

Our turkeys are especially welcome as they were eliminated in Wisconsin by the early 1900’s. Reintroduced in the 50’s and 60’s, they have made an amazing comeback here and in all the states. Approximately 7 million wild turkeys now roam about America.

A few weeks ago, something outside caught my peripheral vision signaling my brain to take notice. Focusing on the pine woods next to our house, I saw a huge tom turkey showing off for a hen, fan tail fully opened and face bright red and blue. Sadly for tom, she took one look at his fantastic display and ambled the other way. Since toms have “harems” of up to twenty hens, I’m sure he had better luck on other days.

It would be a mistake to think of wild turkeys as anything kin to their domestic counterparts. Wild turkeys can run 25 miles per hour. Their top flight speed is 55 miles per hour, and they are able to fly straight up and away. At night they roost in trees.

The birds see in color and have daytime vision that is three times better than humans’ eyesight. (Their night vision, however, is poor.) Excellent hearing allows competing males to hear each other from up to a mile away.

I must admit that I enjoy these wild turkeys more than any of the birds that have come into our home on a certain November day.

Quick….if you had $120 million to spend on art, what would you buy?

This tantalizing question was raised by Holland Cotter, the Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times art critic. The recent sale of one of Edvard Munch’s paintings, “The Scream”, for that price prompted Mr. Cotter to muse on what he would purchase if so endowed with cash.

His answer was “no” to the Munch and “yes” to an “encyclopedic mini-museum for the same dollars”.

What art would I buy if that windfall came my way? My taste runs to classical, calm and modern art. I don’t like screaming in my art, even though I understand that the purpose of some art is to scream very loudly.

Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud would be on my shopping list. A supersize Claus Oldenberg sculpture for the yard would be lovely as well. When shopping for art, $120 million isn’t hard to spend.

Fortunately, I am in complete agreement with Holland Cotter when he concludes his article with these words:

“Personally I love ideas as much as objects, not that I can separate them: I feel ideas are as sensuous as things.

What I collect are experiences-traveling, seeing, being there, anywhere. For me “The Scream” will always mean the memory of a moody Oslo twilight from decades ago. The value of that experience to me is beyond price. When I hear $120 million, I think of how many experiences, for how many people, that might have bought.”

My husband suggested I write this blog, proving that he has a good sense of humor and that I don’t tell stories without permission.

My guy works hard to keep current on all things techie. Every week he writes programs, creates websites, reads technical literature and fixes numerous ailing computers. He is a man of the times.

Imagine his chagrin when he recently pulled out his phone and a young relative spontaneously exclaimed, “Why you have an antique cellphone.”

While not being the type to stand out all night in front of an Apple store to be first with the latest  electronic wonder, he didn’t think of his gadgets as being “antique” either. He does now.

Last week, it was my turn to have an antiquarian moment. I was spending the day with 100 middle schoolers doing an art class on Maria Sibylla Merian, an amazing 17th century German artist who did splendid natural science drawings of insects. I brought a deck of butterfly cards, beautiful photographs and descriptions of many of the world’s lepidoptera species.

“I don’t want you to be creative or imaginative today,” I warned them. “I want you to choose a butterfly card and try to draw it exactly.”

I feared they would work fifteen minutes and call their drawings complete. But to my delight, almost none of the students were finished when the allotted time was up. Now I had a dilemma. They could not finish their work without the photos, and I needed to take the cards with me for a program in another school.

“I guess I will have to make some color copies, “I lamented,” and we all know that colored ink costs as much as French champagne.”

Their classroom teacher didn’t miss a beat. “Go to your lockers and get your cellphones,” she ordered. There was a mass exodus to the halls. The kids returned and photographed their butterfly cards. Problem solved, 21st century style.

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