National Parks & my new interest in Landscapes

ever since I took a class on Land Art, landscapes and representations of landscapes have been transformed for me. Previously, I thought works like the Hudson River School and the like, which glorified the land and therefore the nation, to be rather dull, typical and lacking in depth. It was, however, just my limited perspective. I am now quite inspired by them, looking to the land and to the landscape, as a source of the spiritual, the transcendental, & the sublime. I am reminded of all of my back country hikes with my dad through solitary trails cut off from the everyday chaos of Los Angeles. To him, I am grateful for these trips, travels and escapes where one is alone with the silence of the land. I highly recommend Ken Burn's documentary The National Parks. Inspiring, very inspiring!

Follow the Prophet

This great little gem was on our old laptop that died a terrible dead. Tom recently revived the hard-drive, by pulling it out and putting it in some kind of external hard-dirve backup thing. Among the many poorly written papers and old talks, was this lovely little movie of our Sammy. It requires little introduction itself.

Winter Vacation and the difficulty of starting again

Whinny Post: I had a lovely Christmas vacation--at home with my family and my kids. I have no desire to start writing & working again and that is a bit depressing. Here are some holiday highlights.


Ballet dancing with Stella on a snowy afternoon...


Surprise Spy attach while reading & snuggling a blanket by the fire. . .
(p.s. The gendering going on in these images is certainly not lost on me, but for sentimentalities sake, we're going to kill the critic, skip the formal analysis and just focus on the tenderness for the moment.)

I love my little ones. I'm missing them all over again while I'm at school.