Silhouette

    Fasten your seatbelts: Art group Thursday night.  The leader of our meeting, having abstained from work on the theme, Silhouette, instead provides a seasonal picture – a pastel drawing of a rainspotted maple leaf drafted in gentle fall colors. We all ooh and ahh.

    Next: a photo of the oddest and most intriguing kapok-like clouds and silhouetted trees. Somehow the bumps in the sky associate with the rain drops in the previous work. Where is Bette Davis? Can it be going to be a bumpy night?

    A handsome pair of linoleum prints are trotted out: a composition of fall leaves done in black and white and in color. We like these, too, and are interested in the process.

   Another member of the group produces a seasonal, i.e. Hallowe’en, card made with an iris folding technique and  a silhouette theme. Accompanying these, my own little nitwit puzzle, from a tract left by someone at the Y, a dictionary page, and the mental looping of lyrics from A Fine Romance, the fine song by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields which I like sung by Rosemary Clooney.

   One person provides the piece de resistance, a postage stamp quilt. A showpiece. It is derived from a photograph taken by someone she knows, a factory maintenance worker. The sunset sky is composed of  batik fabric: purple and orange and red and yellow, with an overstitched black tree silhouette. Although the finished product has an authentic Asian look and feel, it is not a tree in a Chinese or Japanese painting, it is a tree crown at the botanical gardens in Allentown.

   The one-inch squares make it measure about 23″ x 17″ plus double-mat and frame. She has sold it, too. We marvel at her gift for turning an idea or a picture into a fabric design and executing it, all in the past six weeks. She receives our highest honors. Here is an artist showing and sharing the power of making wise choices and in making something lovely, beautiful and desirable. It’s like a trip to bountiful that we all want a view to admire.

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.

Deer Crossing

Deer Crossing by Allison Huyett

 

    Posted in invisible ink Labor Day! Today, post haste! Take your time, there’s no time to waste, no time like the present!

   Why is this black truck slowing along Tulpehocken road heading east, parallel to my walking west along the towpath at 7:12 a.m?  The Tulpehocken creek separates us. A natural event joins us: two tawny lumps swim this way in the creek. When they strike land they accelerate, a large doe and fawn, taking flight into the brush.

   Herons above and below both the red covered bridge and the overpass, at points nearly equidistant to each other, one more along the upper stretch, near the locks, and one on the toppled tree on the way back. These are the herons to report, plus one kingfisher near the mill, also crossing the creek, in the air.

   The details of the subway project preoccupy me, visualizing, how will this work? and how can we make this happen?  The range of possibilities amazes me; the distillation of ideas, it’s like being a mermaid.

SUPER Hot and Sticky post

Best find: a S U P E R sticker on the bridge Monday morning. Go ahead! Make my day! Humid, morning cool before the big warm-up. Croaking noises from active living breathing herons and and one sentinel.
We have been squirrel fans for a while, now. Has anyone not seen this yet? We encourage you to leave this site at once! But just this once!

http://stuffifound.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/squirrel-stars-in-vacation-photo/

Come back soon.

Wise to

Darrell, Ron, Scott, Butch and Dave

First trivia question written on a reddish card. It’s a nine day. First question: What is half a byte?
Allison’s answer: Better than none.
Walk time. Crew lined up at bridge makes perfect picture, except Curtis is missing.
Wading heron at first bend.
Pair of water bottles at red covered bridge.

Poland pair

Find: twisted pattern.
Go to: the nine marker.
Pick of the litter: the to in Tomato.

ESPN radio: talking baseball: “When closers don’t close it undermines the whole team.”

Pit stop at Weis for five apples and can of pineapple juice. Eves Drive.

Apples scan $6.01 with the juice, then self serve terminal asks for rescan due to my delay in placing them on the moving belt. New total: $6.03. Self correcting for the nine day. Lose two cents for the delay, gain a perfect number.
Snap: 13

A lovely balance to the day, a day in three parts.

I heart herons

Designer Nerds

nice spot

Neurons happy: Heron on a dead bough: grandaddy of them all, fishing, waiting. View from the road.
Squirrel pops out of a barrel when I make a deposit of litter.
Sunlit scenery. Walk two miles to the eight marker and back, and find a piece of sycamore near the seven. Add the pick of the litter Wonka Nerds box top and voila, today’s rebus. Nerds + give – v = Designer.
Other than that, it’s quiet. Overheard “Research shows…” Something about running half an hour. Meanwhile work on solving world peace. Whose world? Look for the heron on the way back. Might be there. Man and a woman walk with energetic strides and converse in raucous, excited voices, matching in vigor, kind of like the herons make.
Fishing involves patience and timing. Plus location. Pick your spots.

Wides and the White Squirrel

Pathling for a four day

 

   Top story: The White Squirrel has been spotted. We saw it, that is. It is white, no spots. 

  Camel Wides pack is the pick of the litter.  Green heronspotting at start of walk. And tales from the candy factory from Candelario. That  he worked for a candy manufacturer and his nickname is Candy is one of those astonishing alignments in life. He performed maintenance, was the official soap dispenser (Eight kinds in the factory: each for its designated use.) There were eight janitors when he started and four when he left. He was fired and rehired three times. He processed the peanuts used for candy and now he likes to go to the museum and feed the squirrels peanuts. The birds like them too, he says.

  We walk together and when a pathling presents itself for photographing, he asks Did you lose something?

  Found something. Something found us.

   “We owe you a drawing made with the pen you gave us!” we said. “What would you like?”

   “I like birds,” Candelario says.

   “What kind of birds?”

   “The red ones.”

   “Cardinals?”

  “Yes.”

   Note made: add blue ink drawing of  red bird is to project list.

   The white squirrel runs from the grass up the trunk of a tree with vines and disappears. I stop the car and get out and look for it, hoping for a shot. It looks like something to shoot for in the future.

Fuzzy little green heron

Colonial Ad

   Ticket stub, pick of the litter: Colonial AD 000822. Colonial ADULT. Colonial Theater ADULT ticket. Cherish is the word I use to describe.

   Adult ticket and baby heron. 8:14 this morning. First ever sighting of an immature bird. It stands in the grass. It stands about 18″ high. It stands still.

   Because it is a dark and rainy morning following a drenching night, the bird is wet and I have not brought the camera. Of course, when I am unprepared with the camera, this is the time it is most needed.  Back to the car. Here comes a person to jog. Signal intention: there is a young heron up ahead!

   The bird is Oscar if male and Grace if female. It’s a beautiful star and speckled like a hawk and steps with deft, light purpose. It plucks a big fat long worm from the wet grass, a small pond puddle. It waits. I snap. It fishes out another worm, I keep snapping. How does it find them? Another worm. This is why my friend Grumplestiltskin has recommended I take pictures. Productive snapping.

    “But you’re still not professional,”  he tells me. “And I’m a working adult.”

   Along the midsection of the towpath, spot a heron in the water and on the way back, a small snapping turtle attracts attention. We are always alone.

Eight Eight

   If 1961 was the last date that reads the same upside down, what is the next one that will?

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