Charlotte Matthews: Draw With Your Eyes Closed
On Fridays, we drew animals with our eyes closed. Mrs. Plath said it could be anything we wanted. So, there we were: 25 six-year-olds bent over manila paper, crayons in stubby … Continue reading
Julia Margaret Cameron: Photograph of Julia Jackson (1867)
This poetic image depicts the woman who was the model for the beautiful Mrs. Ramsay in “To the Lighthouse”, Virginia Woolf’s great novel of 1927.
Rachel Hadas: Two Poems
One sight that sticks with me is the tail
of a blue phoenix soaring on a tile
from fifteenth-century Turkey. I couldn’t draw it
worth a damn, but gazed until I knew it.
I used the pencil in my hand to see.
Sean Sexton: Herculaneum (audio and painting email to Robert Cording)
I’m reading Basho’s “Backroads to the North Country,” on my trip, an old, crumbling Penguin classics series that includes four separate journeys and a great intro. He conveys at one point how grateful he is to be on the road, Mt Fuji far away back home in Edo, so he needn’t ponder it in his life for awhile.
Derrick Z. Jackson: Administration Cuts Will Leave No Refuge for Wildlife
Smyrna, Delaware—Bald eagles descended to pose on the banks and boulders on the mudflats. Shorebirds bobbed in shallow pools. Great blue herons, great egrets, and snowy egrets snapped up fish … Continue reading
Mike Schneider: Three Hats
When Oddjob flings his bowler
in Goldfinger, it leaps from his hand
& sails like a frisbee across a meadow
& hovers, or seems to, as in a dream
Video: A Swim Lesson
An ode to an everyday hero: Bill Marsh, a swim teacher who helps children manage their fears and discover their own power when submerged in an overwhelming unknown.