Top o' the Pfingstmontag to you!

{Pfingstmontag, Originally uploaded by Lichtwechsel}

According to my calendar (which is French), today is "Pfingst-Montag" (which is German), or Whit-Monday, 'a great festival day of the year with the Germans of the Old World and the New. They celebrate it if they are "city pent," by excursions into the country; if they dwell in the country, they still have their festive out door recreations".'

So basically it is a day off from work, to celebrate being outside.

I'm telling you, those Europeans are so much smarter than us when it comes to time off.....

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.
~ Walt Whitman

Now my feet won't touch the ground

I know, I know, no new posts for a month. What a lame blogger. Even my mom has been giving me a hard time about it. Nothing has inspired me lately, and in fact the month has flown right past me in a blur. I had a big conference in Chicago at the end of April, followed by a long weekend in Phoenix to visit a dear friend and recuperate from the week in Chicago (and while in Phoenix, A. and I did our fair share of economy-boosting for the shoe industry, specifically Donald J. Pliner, but I digress).

Perhaps I was on blog overload. Coming home to a Google Reader with close to 1000 unread posts was a bit overwhelming, I must say. "Mark all as read" seemed a bit like abandoning someone else's children, but I had to do it.

So maybe this bit of silliness will put me back to rights. A little Life in Technicolor, a la Punch & Judy, via Coldplay, in honor of the absolutely fantastic concert of theirs I attended last night here in Hartford. The tix were a birthday gift from The BF, who gave me a small case of Option Anxiety earlier in the day by offering me a choice of birthday activities, each of which involved some sort of live performance. After an afternoon of deliberating the merits of each, I went with the one that seemed the most celebratory, and a good time was had by all.



More Coldplay/puppet action here, if you are so inclined.

They're "sensible" if they make sense to me...

When I started this blog I began a series of posts called "New Bird On The Block", which was partly a way to showcase some of the lovely birdie things I was finding on the interwebs, but also a way to curb my impulses to purchase most, if not all, of said birdie things. I have a little obsession with them, but also a not-enormous apartment, so I had to limit my collection to virtual vs reality. I was thinking I should try to do the same with my purse and shoe habits, and then I saw these beauties in Marie Claire:

{Calvin Klein "Rene" sandals, in silver. Size 10 please.}

I can quit any time, really I can.

All atwitter over Mr. Darcy

Some clever person in Twitterland has begun posting Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice in 140-character bites. Now, before your inner purist screams out "sacrilege", consider this: Jane Austen is known for her "realism, biting social commentary (now known as "snark" - Ed.) and masterful use of free, indirect speech, burlesque and irony". Free, indirect speech: A style of writing where the author's first-person descriptive blurs with their third-person perspective. Sound familiar, bloggy peeps? Were she born 200 years later, methinks she would have been a blogger (and twitterer) ........................

.........

Hmmm.. Oh, what's that? Sorry, I was busy looking at this:

{Mr. Darcy as Colin Firth. Oh, wait, I have that backwards.
Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. sigh}

With thanks to Julia @HookedonHouses for the Twitter find.

I'm sorry sir, your baby is ugly

We are fortunate to have in Our Fair City of Hartford the country's oldest public art museum, a treasure chest of masterworks by everyone from Caravaggio to Mondrian to the most recent (as in "last week") acquisition, Slightly Open Clam Shell by Georgia O'Keefe. The museum's castle-like facade, complete with battlements and leaded glass, is often festooned with enormous banners advertising the latest exhibition, usually with a close-up of one of the artworks, to entice one to come in. Or, in the case of Folkert de Jong in Watou, to totally creep one out. To wit:

{Folkert de Jong in Watou, from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.}

Creepy, right? Good morning Mr. MeltyFace. You know what is even creepier? The sculptures are life size or larger. Enormous. 8 -10 feet tall. They are made of Styrofoam and polyurethane, materials chosen specifically for their manipulative qualities as for their significance as elements of war, impermeability and toxicity. The figures depict a David and Goliath-like representation of Spain vs The Netherlands during the Eighty Years War that began in the 16th century. I understand the use of the grotesque in art. Compelling, historical stuff, a la Picasso's Guernica. But I could not stop thinking:

Here is another one, with a great dental plan.

{kunstwerk van Folkert de Jong in Watou, (say that three times fast) originally uploaded by mjiwill}

Zombie letterpress sign from Yeehaw, found via Good Mouse, Bad Mouse