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4.12.17

My smallest palette

Now that I live in a City, I find it more, rather than less, important to travel light.  In the country, I left many valuables in the car.  After all I lived on an apple orchard surrounded by farmers more interested in missing cows, or crops to worry about my art supplies.

Here, an unlocked car is an open invitation, and in sight belongings a call out for broken glass, so more caution.

Putting together a smaller art kit registered quickly after the Bean and me went to the equivalent of an indoor botanical gardens to draw, or paint.

I took my Letter Writers Alliance pouch wide enough for many pencils, pens, eraser, etc, and the pocket palette put together by Expeditionary Art's intrepid watercolour painter, Maria Coryell-Martin.

No photos.

The METRO Da Vinci - Pete Morris

25.11.16

More London



 The Smithsonian has gone all out Jack London here

24.7.16

Back to Brasil

It is fascinating how our minds and the memories that lay within work.  I was searching for something about Nigeria; read an article on HIV, which somehow led me to a piece on parks in the nation's Capitol.



This triggered an old memory of a leisurely and uncommon walk with a colleague from the NIH along the Potomac River (in Georgetown) and then to the chairman of the Department of Parasitology, where I toiled long enough to get vested.



I promised to visit the aging Professors at their summer home in Long Island, and now time is slipping away as they celebrate life in their 80s, spending 3 months of the year in Brasil where they both went to medical school and met. 

This piece about their frequent returns to their medical school roots is edifying.

The fate of Bradbury's home

I learned today that Ray Bradbury's house in Los Angeles, which sold for more than a million dollars, is being torn down.



In his own words

https://vimeo.com/user9279052


21.10.15

NaNoWriMo 2

Not as much concentration as I had last November, but hope to complete 50,000 words this year.

Guilford, Vermont Art Studio @2007

The work will qualify as personal and should be a positive challenge.

11.9.15

Months ago...and now

Summer is nearly gone.

I have left the country and have once more become a City Mouse.

I have articles I put in "follow up" from months ago and read slowly, and occasionally.   Today or rather this evening, just before dusk, I read a magazine article written by Mariane Pearl about Cuba.

I had several reasons why I wanted to read the piece:  I remember how distressed I was by Ms. Pearl's tragic loss.  Without much irony, I met several colleagues of Daniel Pearl just a few miles from where I am sitting now.    I realized while getting misdirected, something different than lost, a couple of hours ago, that it is September 11, and another anniversary and more memories of loss.

And I was excited to read about Cuba, and pleased that in my lifetime North Americans may once again visit the country.

Castro in the 60s

Batista in the 60s



I have some memories, not of Cuba, but of Cubans I've met or known in the years since Castro had a Revolution, and Batista was overthrown.  I have met rebels, Republicans, former Senators, and those eager to share and exchange biomedical theories and knowledge.

The former Senator I knew was a man I often had lunch with in the 60s.  He left me with sharp memories of his fierce belief that Castro would be overthrown, but only after we finished eating our corn beef sandwiches.   Yes, he had a great sense of humor.  Unfortunately, his blood was spilled before I could grasp the significance of his misdirected hopes or reach a greater political maturity.

Years later, perhaps two decades in number, a man who looked nothing like my Senator, but who was clean shaven, slender and tall with impeccable manners entered my office and greeted me by name.   I never did understand how my name reached into the infectious disease annals of this and another communist country, or how I could graciously express my regret that I was unable to exchange research material.

It is a great loss that my Senator is gone.  It is a great loss to medical research that we were unable to exchange knowledge with the Cubans especially inasmuch as they were outstanding researchers and had first hand experience with human malaria, P. falciparum.

Mariane Pearl painted such a clear picture of her Cuba that I could close my eyes and step onto the street with her and her cousin, Julia.