jerseymurmurs

Rice Pudding. I never used to like it, but now I can't stop eating it, especially when made with a fresh brown egg from E's chickens. My dad declared it the best he'd had since he was a kid. Meanwhile, spring has sprung seemingly overnight and this little one sits and draws and visits bookstores and sings of the "diamond in the sky" and that little one plays the harmonica and names his relatives and rides on the back of a bicycle and the kiddlywink twins rattle tambourines and roll themselves around, already speaking their own secret language. And E's chickens continue to squawk and strut and lay their eggs and life starts over again...

I pluck a book off the shelf and find this quote that seems to describe my quarantine sill life drawings: "Art is a way of preserving experiences, of which they are many transient and beautiful examples, and that we need help containing." [from the book "Art as Therapy"] 

A week with two horrific mass shootings leaves me feeling as wilted as the tulips. And elected officials who want to preserve and enhance gun rights but seek to remove and restrict voting rights? In what democracy does that make sense? 

I saw this on Twitter: Musicians in recording sessions say, "A microphone is the opposite of a gun; you point it at the thing you want to live forever."

This is a happy and relaxed moment I want to freeze for my mother and father: her posing for his photo in front of the “Maja” sculpture on a bright, wintry Sunday afternoon in 1973 on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, overlooking the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. “Maja” is by the German Bauhaus artist #GerhardMarcks and was first exhibited in Philadelphia in 1949. I recognized her in a recent newspaper story and was reminded of this long-ago visit. The statue was removed from the terrace in the 1990s and recently restored to the new “Maja Park” at 22nd Street. Until a year ago when her illness and Covid hit, my 94 year old mother was still regularly going to the Art museum with her dear friends. 

In the “before-times” I made chili for family get-togethers, not only doubling the recipe, but often adding in extra cans of beans and diced tomatoes and making rice, stretching it to feed a crowd. With no occasions to make my chili during the “quarantine-times”, I had a craving for it. My go-to recipe from @wednesdaychef uses beer (and coffee and chocolate!). I made a not-doubled pot using a bottle of @yardsbrew Philadelphia Pale Ale and we enjoyed it so much I made it again the following week with an Irish Golden Ale by @sullivansbrewco_ that simmered for hours on a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon. I pickled thinly sliced onions and cabbage in the juice from a jar of @woswit bread-&-butter pickles and dropped them in the center of my bowl of chili — the perfect accompaniment. 

There is a Celtic spiritual practice called “walking the rounds” — a way of meditating or praying by walking in a sun-wise circle around a sacred object. Knitting in the round seems to me like a manifestation of this practice — the fingers making stitches rather than the feet taking steps. I started this top-down, knitted in the round, yoked “Koivua” sweater two years ago using leftover yarn from other projects. I knitted in fits and starts. Around and around and around, sun-wise, star-wise, moon-wise. The repeating pattern grid as my guide. Walking fingers to calm the mind. This sweater at the end — my sacred wearable object — a warm bonus...

The #koivuasweater was designed by @boylandknitworks