Wednesday Hodgepodge: May's First Day

 

1. Mayday! Mayday!...when was the last time (or a recent time) you literally or figuratively needed to call for help? Elaborate. 

Watching Question Period in Canadian Parliament yesterday.

2. May Day...when was the last time you danced? Do you have a lot of baskets? What's something you keep in a basket? What's your favorite purple flower? 

Baskets: yes, I think we have quite a few of them, mostly on the small side, mostly yardsaled and thrifted. Some are holding things like bread, pens, dishtowels, and a begonia; others are just sitting on their own.

The flower: that's easy, violets.

3. What's something you may do this month? 

I'm still figuring it out.

4. Do you like eggplant? Quick topic changes lol? If you said yes in answer to the eggplant question how do you like yours prepared? Of the following purple foods, which one is your favorite...plums, purple carrots, purple asparagus, eggplant, acai berries, blackberries, purple cauliflower, elderberries, purple potatoes, or passion fruit? 

I haven't eaten any of those things in forever, except for plums (last summer) and purple potatoes when they pop up in a bag from the Little Potato Co. (but I can't say they're really my favourite, I feel like I'm eating something dyed for April Fool's).

How about some purple grapes in the fall instead? 

5. The calendar turns on Hodgepodge Day...

"Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can't help being thankful that they are alive, if for nothing else."-L.M. Montgomery

Tell us one thing you're thankful for today. 

A car that has got us places for seven years.

Artists who do those mysterious things with paint and pencils and stained glass and pottery.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens, the first book in a set of Dickens that my father-in-law gave us. I just finished. Next (alphabetically) would be David Copperfield, but I've already read that so I guess we move on to Dombey & Son.

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

I'm reading about English/Canadian artist (and art teacher) Arthur Lismer. One funny thing about him was that he came from a very ordinary, conservative, straitlaced background, and even as a famous artist he had a very ordinary kind of family and work life. He was also on the spot for the 1917 Halifax explosion and recorded it in drawings, which is a reminder that sometimes God asks us to remember and learn from our stories of pain as well as the good times.

In her 1977 book A Border of Beauty: Arthur Lismer's Pen and Pencil, Marjorie Lismer Bridges remembered the experience of camping with her father:

"In about two hours, whenever he finished a sketch, Dad reappeared and made a camp fire. The meal varied according to our supplies--eggs, beans, bacon. Occasionally someone would give us a freshly caught fish, but my father was no fisherman. Even if we were having cold sandwiches he still made a fire and boiled water for coffee. It was not so much that he loved coffee, but that he enjoyed building a fire."

She also wrote:

“[My father’s] restless pencil was constantly in his hand. He never went anywhere without drawing material in his pocket. Whenever he sketched he usually had a group of people watching over his shoulder, but this never seemed to bother him, and he would carry on a conversation as he worked…[While waiting for meals] he spent the time drawing on menu cards, table napkins, placemats—anything that came to hand. To my mother’s horror, he would even draw on the plates, and then quickly wipe them off with a table napkin when she protested. In any ship or hotel dining room the drawings would be snatched up by the waiters and the diners. Some were even taken back to the chef in the kitchen. There must be Lismer drawings in every corner of the British Commonwealth and the U.S.A. Wherever he was, he illustrated the daily activities, or an item on the menu, or the group at the next table. He never seemed to stop drawing. If he was writing a report he doodled in the margins. If he was reading a paperback book he drew in the blank spaces. He also illustrated his personal letters and his crossword puzzle books…”

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.