Calder cushion

Yes!  It's an Alexander Calder mobile-inspired cushion cover, from Tate Modern - I brought it and its twin back with me from London the other week, and it looks very good in the stark minimalist surroundings of my NC apartment.  What doesn't look so good is that the only cushions I had to stuff inside the covers have a red and white triangle pattern on them - I surely must do something to remedy that ...

baseball, and Jackie Robinson

Yes, that's a customized baseball (made in China: it has a little stamp on it ...).  I love its softness and heft: it really invites one to throw it, hard, somewhere - but inside my apartment doesn't seem like a good idea.  

And why do I have a customized baseball?  There was an event at the NHC tonight (to jump-start the Trustees' spring meeting) - a screening of the Ken Burns Jackie Robinson PBS documentary - coming up in early April - or to be more precise, a truncated version of the 4-hour documentary, introduced by Gerald Early, who was an adviser to it.  I'm sure the 4 hour version is more coherent than what we saw - but I came away with various take-aways

- who knew?!  The Dodgers used to be in Brooklyn, not LA!  Please excuse me, all baseball aficionados - well, hey, probably most Americans ... sometimes realize that I have very elementary gaps in my knowledge.  Yes, I know, Chavez Ravine, etc etc, and yes, I knew the Dodgers played briefly in the Coliseum before that ... but ...

- Jackie Robinson was a really complex figure in terms of the mix of talent (in four sports, before he settled on baseball, or baseball settled on him) iconicity and politics - and what I saw of the documentary pointed to this complexity, but offered very little by way of analysis

- the Obamas had some great stuff to say.  I'll so miss B and M O, and their intelligence, when they leave the White House.  It'll be worth watching the documentary for what they have to say ... 

I wish I had a photo of (or indeed had eaten) a baseball-decorated cupcake, too.  

a flashy flower vase

All I need is a little glass or plastic container that will fit into the cavity where the flashbulb would normally fit, and I have a new, unusual flower holder.  This is a Kodak Six-20 Flash Brownie camera of 1940 - the first synchronized flash camera that Kodak produced, and one of the very, very first affordable such cameras, marketed at people who were in no way experts at photography.  I was taking notes about this just yesterday ... which meant that today, when I went into the wonderful Camera Works, 2611 W. Carver Street, Durham - a true, old-style, old-fashioned, camera repair and antique camera shop (I have problems with my little Sony point and shoot's lens cover mechanism) - today, when I saw this on the shelf opposite me, I said - Oh! May I look! because I knew exactly what it was.  It's hardly a rarity, but I'm so very happy to bring her home.  (I think she may have been there a while - an on line photo from November 2013 shows her exactly in the same spot that I found her).

I have a sense that this may not be the last picture I take of her ...

heralding spring

On a wall just round the corner from where I'm living in central Durham.  That orange circle could, more or less, stand for the sun, but I suspect it's more like a basketball (also seasonal).  And the little winged heralds?  Perhaps they're symbolizing the need to blow light green pollen out of the air.

Easter lunch

(or: Farmers' market redux).  It seemed to me that eggs were surely in order: here are a couple, scrambled, with (a) some chopped fresh young asparagus spears (b) some chopped (and sautéd with garlic) pink oyster mushrooms - together with the ham and cheese scone (warmed in oven) that I mentioned yesterday.  For fans of the hot cross buns, the bakery that has a Saturday stall in the market is otherwise in downtown Durham and is called Loaf: on their Instagram feed, they have some terrific pictures of the hot cross bunds being baked ... https://www.instagram.com/loafdurham/

Yes, weekends can be - quiet, on one's own, especially when it's a holiday-day, but this certainly had a feast like quality to it, especially since my plans for a long walk were drowned by the pouring rain outside.

hot cross buns

A day late, to be sure - but then, the Farmers' Market (where these were on sale at my favorite bakers' stall) isn't open on Fridays.  Hot cross buns seem to have been an C18th British invention: I didn't realize that they not only spread, in the C19th, throughout the Empire (makes sense) - and, evidently, to the US - but that the Australians seem in particular to have taken them to heart - and indeed, make them in other flavors - with chocolate chips instead of dried fruit (now, that might tempt me); coffee- flavored, and so on.  When I was little, we always used to have them on Good Friday morning (it was regarded as a heresy to have them on any other day, of course), which is possibly why I associate them with a sense of sadness appropriate to Good Friday, since they were consumed after the Home Service (later Radio 4) played (at 7 a.m, at 8 a.m.) a particularly lugubrious version of "There is a green hill far away/Without a city wall)" to commemorate the day.  I took particular pride in knowing (I'm sure my mother told me this very early on) that "without" meant "outside," in this context - not that it lacked some kind of erected barrier made of stone or brick.  I wonder when Radio 4 stopped playing hymns for major dates in the church calendar?  Easter Day would be greeted by "Jesus Christ is risen today," and so on.

Alas, I don't like hot cross buns (it's the fruit, I think), but I consoled myself with a bacon and cheese scone, instead.

pollen!

This might look like a peculiarly scummy pond - but actually, it's the roof and back windshield of my car, after a day in the carpark under the pine trees.  It's a very good job that I'm not allergic to this thin sticky green dust.  I'm wondering what to mix it with - egg white? - to turn it into an effective painting medium.  Or I would be, if there was anything even remotely attractive about this color ...