Rosh Hashanah 2021
September 5, 2021
In Hebrew, ‘rosh’=’head’, ‘ha’=’the’, and ‘shanah‘= ‘year’: ‘head [of] the year’, or, new year. Another name for this holiday is ‘Yom Teruah’ which means ‘day of shouting or blasting’. So on Rosh Hashanah, most commonly in Synagogue, the ram’s horn is trumpeted and it is itself a major symbol of the beginning of what are the High Holy Days when Jews around the world prepare themselves for fresh starts and new beginnings. Often a meal is served among family and will include the traditional apples and honey which signify a sweet year ahead.
To celebrate this auspicious and happy occasion, I created a greeting card of my own since I’ve not been able to lay my hands on any Rosh Hashanah cards in our small city of 100,000. I know there is a Jewish community in Kamloops, but not being Jewish myself, have yet to explore what it may have to offer by way of greeting cards and other such items.
The famous and well-loved musical ‘Fiddler On The Roof’ is set in a Polish/Russian shtetl (which in Yiddish means ‘small town’ or ‘village’), a part of a larger city which is populated by the Jewish community. And I wanted my card to have the feel of this loved and enjoyed Broadway show and film.
Using early photographs of Eastern European klezmer musicians, I set about searching out subjects for an authentic-looking greeting card, wanting to populate it with 19th century shtetl villagers and their klezmer-playing musicians:
A Plaid Christmas
December 26, 2019
My partner and spouse Raul loves Christmas the way all Filipinos love Christmas: he LOVES Christmas. In The Philippines, the decorations start coming out at the beginning of September. With no Halloween and Thanksgiving interrupting things, Christmas prep can start as soon as summer is deemed to be finished. In our house there’s a rule where no Christmas trappings can come out from storage until Remembrance Day. This year, at 5 am on November 11th I awoke to hearing the Christmas trees being freed from their storage confines. My weak attempts to postpone all this until after the Remembrance Day observances at 11 am, went unheeded.
This year it was a plaid Christmas upstairs, and a gold and white Christmas in the front alcove/entry downstairs, with a purple and silver tree in the rec room. Next year? Apparently we’re having a pink Christmas–but, pastel pink and dove grey. He can’t wait–but has to, life being what it is, lol. And now you know what all our storage space is crammed with.
BTW, all those gorgeously wrapped gifts under the trees? Empty. Every. Single. One.
….a little nuts
November 20, 2015
Quite some months ago I asked Jackie of ‘Lost In Thought Photos’ (https://lostinthotphotos.wordpress.com/) for permission to do a miniature based on her wonderful photograph of a little tree squirrel.
Jackie very kindly agreed and emailed me back a very fine image of what –based on its colouration– appears to be a Fox Squirrel, which, even the most hardened rodent defamer would have to be a little nuts not to admit is cute.
Here’s how they are described in Wikipedia: “. . . Fox squirrels are strictly diurnal, non-territorial, and spend more of their time on the ground than most other tree squirrels. They are still, however, agile climbers. They construct two types of homes called ‘dreys’, depending on the season. Summer dreys are often little more than platforms of sticks high in the branches of trees, while winter dens are usually hollowed out of tree trunks by a succession of occupants over as many as 30 years. Cohabitation of these dens is not uncommon, particularly among breeding pairs. . . ”
Besides their cuteness, it is charming that they are non-territorial, and have been known to share their homes. That is certainly not true for a great many squirrels, who seem to busy themselves hurling insults and chasing rivals all day long.
Hunting for frames is fun, losing myself in one or some of our ten or so 2nd hand stores, and recently resulted in this very nice (likely faux) leather 5″ x 7″ one for $.75. It allows this little painting to sell for $35.
Our little Gallery keeps 20% commission. So many thanks to Jackie at https://lostinthotphotos.wordpress.com/ !
…..photographic thank you
November 3, 2015
A number of months ago, coming across stunning photographs of Puffins, permission was sought from the photographer and world traveler, Rolf Stange, to use one of them for the painting of a miniature.
Getting such spectacular images of these illusive birds takes persistence and resolve. They spend nearly all of their lives in open sea, coming to shore only to breed. Here is more about them…..
“. . . Iceland is the breeding home of perhaps 60 percent of the world’s Atlantic puffins. The birds often select precipitous, rocky cliff tops to build their nests, which they line with feathers or grass. Females lay a single egg, and both parents take turns incubating it. When a chick hatches, its parents take turns feeding it by carrying small fish back to the nest in their relatively spacious bills. Puffin couples often reunite at the same burrow site each year. It is unclear how these birds navigate back to their home grounds. They may use visual reference points, smells, sounds, the Earth’s magnetic fields—or perhaps even the stars. . . ”
source: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/atlantic-puffin/
Rolf Stange ‘at home’ (which looks about as inviting as spending most of the year bobbing about the N. Atlantic nose-diving for herring)
Here is Rolf’s wonderful photo which was the inspiration for a watercolour miniature …..
weisserwatercolours 