Kathy climbed up on the counter the other night to reach way up and back in one of her cabinets. “Do you need any help?” I said. “Nope,” she said, “I found them!”
She stepped down with the salt and pepper shakers in hand. Looking at both, she grinned, “I’ve been thinking about these two.”
See: Why She Was Smiling
As I turned into the driveway at work early in the morning, I decided to catch all the color on my BlackBerry…
Claire, Gabriele, and I were wondering what was going on in the one scene shown in several paintings and mosaics at the Greek Orthodox church. Something like the one below.
We wondered who was the old man on the left and the young man or woman on the right. And then there was an old man in chains at the bottom.
A little research revealed this is a traditional icon of the Resurrection or the “Harrowing of Hell” when Jesus descended into hell to free the trapped souls.
In the painting Jesus has crashed through the gates of hell and is freeing the two souls longest trapped, Adam and Eve. A demon or trapped soul will be shown under foot, often with many locks being unlocked (freeing of souls.) Sometimes angels and prophets accompany Jesus in these scenes. If there is a word at the top, it usually means “rising up.”
For some reason it is a tradition to show Adam old and Eve young. I went googling to find out why. This is one of those things hard to google. “why is adam old and eve young in greek painting”.
In searching I found a sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating the unveiling of a painting just completed and being unveiled at St Andrew Holburn in London. It’s a pretty good sermon where he invites the audience to look closely at all of the meaning packed into the painting (typical of an icon.)
A key part of his sermon is how old Adam and Eve appear in the painting, representing their “4,000 winters.” So that answers the old question, but I wondered why the artist had deviated from the tradition of making Eve young. I zoomed in. I don’t think she is old in this painting (below). I think the artist stuck with the tradition, and the Archbishop missed an opportunity to answer my question about a young Eve. (At least he answered about an old Adam.) Maybe it is something about renewal / starting over.
I wonder if the Archbishop consulted the artist before writing the sermon? Anyway, I like the paintings of this scene, because it focuses not on the cross, but on what happened as a result.
www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2561
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It took about two weeks to figure out what to do for Gabriele’s cell phone. We were trying to keep cost down for what is basically a 9 month need. Unfortunately our Verizon friends-and-family plan is booked.
After several trips to Sam’s phone center, research on the web, calls to Verizon, and exchanges with friends and family, we decided to get Virgin Mobile’s pay-as-you-go. $80 phone. $25 per month. 300 minutes, unlimited texting, email, and data. The phone has a mini-browser built in, so it is inherently limited by what you can do with it.
On our third trip back to Sam’s, we had made our decision, but even then, the phone guy suggested another unexplored option: Metro PCS (which he did not sell.) But Gabriele was ready to buy, and so was I. It took about 45 minutes to get her phone set up. In this photo, she is standing in the middle of some of the biggest marketing and product promotion in America. Now we have to figure out what to do for Nicole…
Our plan was to meet at Danny’s mid-afternoon and then go to the airport to pick up Nicole returning to the Peace Corps. I drove from work. Kathy and Kelly drove from home. I got there early, so while sitting with Danny at his kitchen table, he got an email translation of a voicemail just left by Kelly on his cell phone. (Danny uses Google Voice to handle all of his voicemail.)
Now Kelly knows Danny does this and that Google will translate her voice message to text to send him. So she talks funny and even uses pig Latin to trick Google.
Somewhat exasperated, Danny reads the following out loud to me:
Hi if we Ian. Don’t you know I fit to get off that so if you need to call and tell us what exited to get off that house job her. Robert didn’t lose sweetie. 2 less okay doing drive in non 3 cross day. My name is Dan.
So he just called her back to find out they were looking for an exit number…. which they had already figured out. We all arrived over an hour-and-half before Nicole came up the escalator.
Play:
Kathy and I went shopping at Kroger today. There is large painting of Snellville in 1952 at the main intersection of 124 and 78. It is about 20 feet wide. I took three shots with my BlackBerry and stitched them together in Photoshop, correcting the perspective distortion.
The painting is by Dianna Love Snell (of the Snellville Snell’s.) Snellville used to be called New London.
There was no red-light camera at that time.
Kathy, Claire, Kelly and I took the dogs on a walk up to the neighborhood lake last night. We wanted poor Clyde, who has been so hot, to have a chance to go for a swim. Clyde has no problem walking right into a body of water and swimming. There were no geese out on Holly Lake last night. He often will swim toward them.
Stout would love to join Clyde, but he hates water. He’s watching in the snapshot below. As soon as Clyde would climb out, Stout would jump all over him.
I threw a stick out on the water, and like a true retriever, Clyde brought it back. He kind of looks like a white alligator!
[I asked Bennett to explain the reference in this post.]
“Monti” (not sure of the spelling) is an Armenian dish that is made with a ground lamb mixture with parsley and onion, small balls baked with a pasta “cover” – open at the tops. Basically, an Armenian ravioli.
Served in a beef broth with a shake of hot sauce in it. A small bowl on the side of lemon, yogurt and parsley is used as a dipping sauce.
Kids wanted this for Thanksgiving dinner one year.
Bennett responding. [via Facebook]
A nice fathers day morning that included a walk with Kathy and the dogs. I found over a dollars worth of change in the pool parking lot. Claire got up and cooked party pancakes and bacon. Danny wandered in from a night out with a “Happy Father’s Day Dad!” greeting… just in time for breakfast. Nicole called from some remote location in Armenia where she is participating in a recycle-training camp. She was in good spirits and will be hiking up a mountain with seven other volunteers mid-week. Only 8 more weekends in country!
There was a happy Father’s Day email from Gramalie to Bob, Grant, and I. Not sure she knows Ted got a happy father’s day card with a dog on the front from Katie and Austin.
Kelly got up with a bit of an upset stomach, possibly from the graduation party she and Claire attended with the Fadeley family. Granma Nimmo (Nancy’s mom) was there and bragged on how handsome and cute she always thought Kelly and Claire’s mom and dad were… how much she really liked them. Later they realized she was talking about Grandad and Gramalie, and there was much laughter with the family. (So that cute is you mom!)
After breakfast, I opened up some nice presents seen here. Kathy put together a photo collection from the beach to put in my office. Kelly picked out a new colorful, square coffee mug for my office. Danny got me the last Johnny Cash CD with a DVD along with some beers. And Claire made me a cool tie-dye T-shirt . She also made one for herself, Danny, and Kelly. And finally, I got some “fun-size” M&Ms and Baby Ruths.
For some reason, opening all of the presents had Kelly cracking up and almost unable to breathe. She’ll have to explain.
Then off to church for our LAST mass in the old church. New church gets dedicated Thursday. It is really nice. Kathy and I might have to have another wedding ceremony.
After Danny and I finish a Guinness and Sweetwater half-and-half, we’re all heading to see Toy Story 3.
Happy fathers day to all and to all a good night!
What do all of these have in common? Movie producers Claire and Fiona, and the video record feature of Claire’s digital camera. All assembled in iMovie. Try out the higher resolution (720p) version here.
Getting ready to the mow yard, I was walking about on P-Patrol with bucket and scooper in hand. A butterfly took notice, and flew around me and then the bucket. After a couple of turns around the stinky bucket including a brief in-and-out, it lighted on the toe of my boot and started tasting my boot with its proboscis.
It did this for about a minute, and I decided to see if I could get in to climb on my finger (remembering our visit to the butterfly garden at Callaway.) A gentle nudge from the front, and the butterfly climbed on my finger. It started tasting away. After another minute, I wondered if I could get a photo. So I put down the bucket and scooper, and carefully walked inside to get my BlackBerry and then back outside.
I wanted a photo with the wings open, which proved almost impossible to time given the random opening and the one second delay the BlackBerry has while taking a photo. I took about 30 photos trying to get it right. Most ended up being blurry, but the one here came out pretty good.
All of this took about 5 minutes with the butterfly probing away and slowly moving from my finger to my thumb. I then let it climb onto one of Kathy’s flowerpots where it did some tasting, then flew away. Flowers. “Blech.” Boots and thumbs. “Yum!”
