Nina Lewis

Archive for August, 2009

To know me is to know that I love words.

To know me is to know that I love good writing.  Writing that mourns with those who mourn or shouts hallelujahs to the glorious-ness of life.

And to know me is to know that I am patriotic — well before it was the fad du jour.

And so you will not be surprised that I liked the following quote from a Danish journalist Poul Höi, who lives in the US and covers American affairs for the Danish paper Berlingske Tidend.  Höi was an eye-witness to the 9-11-attack. This quote appeared in the paper the day after the attacks.  The quote goes as follows:

“There are days when words are too small. When your eyes are bigger than your mouth. When the sound of planes over your head, the sight of clouds rising into the sky as a dark cone, and the smell — the smell of fire, of the moment when a fire is the most omnivorous — seems almost too overwhelming to pass on. But words are our tool, and words now must do the job.”

This is the translation of the quote.  I wonder if it is as beautifully written in Danish as it is in English . . .

A moment of silence, please, as we think of the upcoming eighth anniversary of 9/11.

I got this in an e-mail.  I thought it was interesting — especially interesting in the fact that this wasn’t touted all over news-dom.  Had it been Bush, I’m sure that a video clip like this would be splashed all over our TV screens for weeks ad nauseam.

All rock salt and empty paint bucket artists beware.  There’s a new kid on the block showing off.  He’s sharp.  His work is sharp.  Both metaphorically and physically.

Gone are the empty buckets of paint hanging from the ceiling.  Thanks goodness.  The new display is mostly of paintings.  However, there’s one display that I found very intriguing.  The artist (or should I say glass-smithie or glass cutter) has cut pieces of glass and has arranged them in a 3 dimensional intricately arrangement.  These pictures don’t do it justice.  I like it FAR better than the rock salt and the old buckets.

I wonder how many Band-Aids he went through . . .

When I saw this picture posted on my daughter’s blog, I felt I just HAD to post it here. What a sweet granddaughter!!

First it was rock salt. In clear Plexiglas cubes. Spaced on the floor in a grid pattern. That was an art display in our Harris Fine Arts Center here on campus. Everyday as I walked to the organ lab to practice (Christmas music . . .), I puzzled over the artistic-ness of those cubes. The rock salt clumped in our water softener is more intricately arranged than the simple salt piles in the cubes.

After several days, I noticed pictures hanging on the walls of the Fine Arts Center. Pictures of those cubes smugly holding the rock salt. The cubes were placed in our Southern Utah desert. Still arranged  in a grid pattern.

I could see artistic merit in the pictures. Lighting came into play. The camera angle on some of them was quite intriguing. And, even though the landscape was almost as bleak as a moon-scape, at least there was something else in the picture to look at besides rock salt. I sighed with relief when they took out the cubes.

Now it is buckets. Empty 5 gallon-sized paint buckets. Buckets that used to hold white paint. Buckets that used to hold yellow paint. (Golden yellow sans any hint of orange. Not bright daffodil or lemon yellow. Merely golden yellow.)

These buckets are hanging upside down at various heights from the ceiling. I ask any of you who may be artistic in nature to please explain the artistic value of old empty paint buckets hanging from the ceiling. My left brain is in a slug fest with my right brain to figure it out. My left brain is winning.

Maybe in a few days there will be pictures of the buckets. But I doubt it.