Friday, March 19, 2010

Poem for Friday and Sackler Gallery

Nature XVII: Who Robbed the Woods
By Emily Dickinson


Who robbed the woods,
The trusting woods?
The unsuspecting trees
Brought out their burrs and mosses
His fantasy to please.
He scanned their trinkets, curious,
He grasped, he bore away.
What will the solemn hemlock,
What will the fir-tree say?

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I spent the morning testing out computer programs -- Gimp, download accelerators, various potential substitutes for Nero which have all failed to create DVDs that my DVD player will recognize, though my computer accepts everything ripped with DVD Shrink and burned with CDBurnerXP or InfraRecorder -- anyone have any suggestions, please? I can get a student version of Photoshop Elements since my kids use it, but I think I can only install it on one computer and then no one in this household can buy another, so I don't know what to do about that.

Otherwise the new computer is now working very well, and I had a pretty mellow day -- watched some Due South ("The Ladies' Man," which I adore) while folding laundry, ate some peanut ginger tofu, took Adam to his tennis lesson, ran out to the mall to get a cheap sleeveless pink top at the Macy's sale and ended up getting a gorgeous dress on sale that I might wear to my sister's daughter's Bat Mitzvah. And it was incredibly gorgeous out, and I got to walk around the nature center while waiting for son to finish at tennis, and there were daffodils all around the mall.


A Tibetan monk works on a sand mandala at the Sackler Gallery last weekend, a demonstration to accompany the 'In the Realm of the Buddha' exhibit.


A golden seated Buddha from Tibet.


Also from Tibet, a sculpture of Jambhala, the bodhisattva of compassion.


A Ganesha sculpture from 13th century India.


Shiva and Uma, from 14th century South India.


Vishnu with Avatars.


A Yogini.


Shiva Dakshinamurti. These statues can all be found in the Sackler's South Asian & Himalayan Art Collection, Sculpture of South and Southeast Asia.


We are all pleased here that FlashForward is back and doubly pleased about Lindsay Crouse as crazy mom! Lots of the story is still not making sense (hellooo, you sent an agent out to escort the most dangerous man in the world and didn't give her a beeper or a cell phone in case he faked a medical crisis?) but the performances are without exception really enjoyable and the character arcs are interesting. We did not watch Ohio knocking Georgetown out of the NCAA tournament (though if we had known that was going to happen we might have, heh), but we are relieved Villanova made it through the first round and delighted that Notre Dame lost to Old Dominion (whose motto, I was told in my youth, is "We don't drink! We don't smoke! Norfolk! Norfolk!").

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