DURO 6 Arias, Constitution Day 2009 and the Paper Czar

Constitution Day by Allison Huyett

 

 

   We the editors of  The Heron Report present the preamble of the United States Constitution and some items donated by the Paper Czar.

   Our own day begins with a kind of preamble. We walk along the creek. We come to the studio and office and and convene with our in-house representatives, including the Paper Czar. We make arrangements.

   Breakfast is one of the sweet spots of the day. The bakery frequently employs paper bags. We like to read the printing: brand and size at the top, name and date stamp on the bottom. The stamp reveals who made the bag and when. A creators mark! Here is the work of Arias, from June 29, 2009. We wonder what Arias looks like.

    From our preamble along the creek, we report one big heron, airborne from a large sycamore. The big bird swoops large, wingspan big as the Ben Franklin Bridge.

Sign of the Times, Reading PA

   Our stance is neutral.  This is a visual of interest that we photographed on a three day and put in the bitemyhorse.com digital image savings account to ripen and mature.

Sotomayor Sign

hello kitty

Sharpshooter heron on the toppled tree.
humid. what is this?
Curtis reports finding young raccoon curled up in trash barrel. Sleepy eyed.
Library lecture last night. Keyword: Empire.
Curse of drinking class calls.
Distract with trivia, enrich with trivia.
Obsess with celebrity, cherish celebrity.
Fascination with the fertile couple. Fascination with life.

Spotted: MESSED THAT UP!

   Proclamation on railroad car that’s hauling eastward this morning: MESSED THAT UP! Sprayed initials and a smiley face. The smiley face catches my eye first.

    This makes us think of Schlemiel, outlined in transactional analysis: Eric Bern M.D.’s Games People Play. The pleasure of messing. Some artists are messy. Some of the best artists, Warhol and Magritte, for example are the neatest. We say this as if they are both still alive, which in a sense, they are.

   On the towpath trail, a turtle trail halts me 7:12 am and this startles a heron. If we had to read its cry we would have to say it sounded vexed. Its embedded purr was a note of having been disturbed. A sycamore  limb three stories above me moves like a springboard bouncing after the diver has sprung.

   A second heron wades near the double storm pipe outlet above the 10 marker, it too takes off. This is an embedded visual, two of three herons are heard and not seen. The next one frahnks at Plum creek. A catbird catches a worm 8:14 a.m.

lizness katthundheit!

  

Liz Hess art 2009

 

   Cherchez le chat?  God bless the animals!

   July’s edition of Furry Friday at the  Humane Society of Berks County www.berkshumane.org unleashed the work of Liz Hess, a bilingual Lancaster, Pennsylvania artist who speaks the language of Sweden, where dog is hund and cat is katt.

    Behind every great artist is a fine fuzzy friend or two; Hess’s cat, Claude, and her dear dog, Prudence, help with the Lizness business: multiple series of paintings, pastels and prints. We particularly like the parity: for every canine picture,  there is an equal and opposite work for felines.

   Itching for rain? Hess also paints likenesses of red umbrellas, some with animals.

    A giclee (“spraying with ink”) technique is used for about one-third of the paintings. 

    Hess makes a charming habit of annual travel abroad. She lived most of her third decade in Sweden (Lapland).

   Visit: www.lizhess.com

Overheard in Reading, PA

  Sunday morning.

 Cloud cover.

 God is an Awesome God foreplate.

 Fisherman with cart and accoutrements for a week’s worth of fishing.

Vitamin water bottle, capped, with half a swig left, left on the wood footbridge,

 Predetermined I would pick up a foil shape today: a Six day for metal and helpful people and travel. It looks like bunny with ears, or a person with a face and a headdress, inverted it also looks like a different face.

 At other end of walk, 20 cars in the park parking area; another car enters as I make the rounds,  unable to find a spot. Find a Go-gurt wrapper that reads: “You could Win an Awesome Adventure.” Our Yogurt is an Awesome Yogurt?  The concept I find gross, the drawings, darling. A crocodile and a seal.

   Also find an empty, flattened Newport cigarette carton which I use to take notes. The little flap with 20 written on it breaks off (damp.) ”Where do you want to go?”  the writing on-the-go-yogurt tube asks.

 Bicyclists on the weekend are bit of a terror. Not five days, more like five months of pent up energy to be released.  

Admire one new fella who excels at efficient multitasking riding bike and consulting on the cellular:

   “You got to buy that new,” says the business cyclist. “You can’t get that out of an old truck. Sometimes you gotta make them yourself because you can’t buy them anymore.”

The vitamin water bottle goes in the recycling bin.

I want to go home.

POS Frog Rescue

 

Wheat Receipt

 A wheat receipt sticks up out of the grass at the park this morning. Actually, it is a Visa sales slip from Bell Mawr, New Jersey, dated May 7 for $30.90 with Central Atlantic Merchant Services of Vineland New Jersey printed on the back. POS Merchant specialists.

   Because my notebook is off on its own somewhere, this piece of paper brought across state lines becomes a page leaf, where I create a magic square for today assess the elements and the shape of the day. The reveal is a U shape with noticeable emphasis on the relationship sector. Five times. Health and earth, wealth and wood, reputation and flame also a feature. After I have marked this down I get paid a dollar, because that is what is on the path as soon as I cross the bridge. So far today I have earned $1.10, counting the dime in the parking lot at the bakery, but the first one to mention money is at a disadvantage, so we will not mention it.

   What’s next? A butterfly sticker and a beautiful day. I think about a property I saw in town with an ARTIST WANTED sign. It’s for sale and it has a studio. As I make a mental review of the street number, a heron flies low, not over the water, but over the grass meadow near the memorial area to my right. The time on my cellular is 7:42 and those are the numbers of the house, although not in that order. What kind of sign is that?

   Another heron along the mid-stretch, a few fisherman up further. Some letters written, all I can make out are I S S and maybe an H or a Y but a puzzle. The purple phlox is strong and straight, it is a four day, this is the color. I have lifted a dead bird from the path under the red covered bridge, a sparrow, I think. A gnat or some other type of insect buzzes near its eye.  A man enters the path, is ahead of me.

   After I have turned around at the end, find a small frog upside-down on the screenings. Not another one! I’m searching for the receipt to draw on, and when I reach in  my pocket, it is missing and I must have a look of panic because the talking bicyclers come toward me and the lady asks “Is everything all right? and I want to say “Ask him!”  and the simplest answer is a simple ‘yes.’ So I end up drawing the frog on a piece of Ricola wrapper with herbal pictures.

   When I make the move to move it off the path, its leg jerks and I realize it is still alive. A peice of sycamore bark makes a good gurney and I place it right side up on the moss and try to flick some of the tiny stones off its face without touching it too much. It looks stunned or shocked, who wouldn’t be after falling from a tree or out of some beak or talons.

   The rest of the way back is quiet thinking about when I might die, what my end will be plus look for wherever I dropped the New Jersey pizza restaurant receipt. It must have been when I pulled out my phone to check the time, but I do that more than once sometimes. It is where I saw the heron to report on. Hooray.

  I pick up a blue wrapper along the needle’s eye path and see Laura running with a purple sweatshirt tied round her waist and I know it’s going to be a good day.

Spotted: On Cherry, On Washington

A woman walking on Cherry Street in the Thursday afternoon rain. She carries an umbrella of cherry-printed fabric.
A grade school bus: girl in the front seat above the stairwell standing holding her artwork across the window pane like a handsome transom.

A little night reading

   Question for pondering, posed in the book The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel:

Burning question

From the Office of the Vice President

   I have been sent another book in the mail, upon which are written the letters OVP. It is a paperback in Erin Hunter’s cat tales series, called Forest of Secrets. OPV.  Text messages are three letter words.

   OVP. Office of the vice-president. Also a something something venture partners. Ohio Valley.

This may be an initial Rohrshach test. OVP. It’s also written on each odd-numbered side of the tape cassettes. POV is point of view, something that is found in screenplays, (ahem). Could mean, over, please. Over, vous please.  Ovarian partnership. Ovariparous. Bearing fruit.

   Sometimes an abbreviation is just an abbreviation, such as Overbrook Park.

I listen to side three of the tapes again today, Abt Vogler is one that always strikes me, especially the lines:

That out of three sounds he framed, not a fourth sound, but a star.