LITTLE GIRLS AND MORE MEMORIES

I just had another wonderful memory that I omitted in the last post. I have my Senior Moments more frequently than I used to, but it's great when you have a great flashback!

When I was a young girl (in training to be a young lady), a very special treat for me was going to Dallas to shop. Growing up in Fort Worth, that was pretty much a no-no since the two towns were in strong competition at the time. I remember one time when Amon G. Carter, who was a friend of my families and a very prominent citizen in Fort Worth, took a sack lunch with him to Dallas and ate it on the street corner since he didn't want to patronize any of their restaurants. Now that's really strong competition! Big Amon, as Daddy called him, didn't like Dallas at all since Fort Worth was HIS town. After all, he owned the only newspaper in town, The Fort Worth Star Telegram!

Anyway, every year just before school started, my Mother would sneak me over to Dallas to a very exclusive dress shop for children called Young Ages, and buy my wardrobe for special occasions there for the coming year. At the time, Fort Worth didn't have anything like that. The dresses were lovely little one of a kind frocks, and I always felt very special when I was wearing one. Since I had to wear uniforms at the private school I attended, this made dressing up much more important to me.

After we shopped, we would go to the Adolphus Hotel for lunch and watch the ice show. For several years, there was a small ice rink in the hotel itself and as you dined, you could watch a special performance by professional ice skaters. What a treat! The hotel was just down the street from Neiman Marcus, so after lunch we would finish our shopping there and head home before Daddy arrived home from work. It was Mother's and my little secret.

Neiman's has always been a special place to me as well. Mr. Marcus did not have a store in Fort Worth at the time (that came much later) and at Christmas time my Godfather, Ben E. Keith, would always buy me something really special from there (he wasn't as fussy about shopping in Dallas as his good friend Amon was). He also knew that I loved to receive presents from that store (I still do!) They wrapped things more beautifully that any other place in the world in my eyes, and I think I really liked the wrapping as much as the gift inside.

Here is some interesting information I found on the Adolphus. When Queen Elizabeth II visited Dallas in 1991 it probably didn’t occur to her that she was staying in a hotel built on a beer budget with champagne taste.
Built in 1912, the Hotel Adolphus was bankrolled by hotel namesake Adolphus Busch, co-founder of the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis. Mr. Busch built the 260-room hotel for $2.5 million. However, shortly after the hotel opened, he died in his native Germany without seeing the Texas hotel.
For nearly a century the hotel has maintained its gilded-age flavor of opulence and gracious living. When the grand 19-story hotel opened on Commerce Street, it was deemed “the most beautiful building west of Venice’’ by the architectural critics of the day, and has since attracted scores of other accolades gushing over the toney restaurants and plush decor.

In addition to the royal visit, the hotel was known for its impressive guest list of the fabulously famous. The hotel’s guest book reads like a Who’s Who of the 20th century.
For example, here are some of the signatures: Steve Allen, The Andrews Sister, Maya Angelou, Lucie Arnaz, Arthur Ashe, Gene Autrey, Joan Baez, Irving Berlin, Peter Bogdonavich, Yul Brenner, George Burns, Michael Caine, Rosemary Clooney, Bill Cosby, Bing Crosby, Faye Dunaway, Amelia Earhart, Greer Garson, Gatlin Brothers, Dizzy Gillespie, Jane Goodall, Merv Griffin, Ethan Hawke, Hildegarde, James Earl Jones, B.B. King, Janet Leigh, Jay Leno, Yo-Yo Ma, Mickey Mantle, Roger Miller, Mary Tyler Moore, Edith Piaf, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Grace Slick and Donald Trump.
In addition to its impressive guest list, the hotel boasts a collection of museum-quality art. Busch family members took some major pieces when the hotel was sold. However its current holdings include: Portrait of a Woman as Diana, the Huntress, by Jan Gerritz van Bronchorst; Venus and Cupid, by Louis Courtat; The French Court by Ladislaus Bakalowicz; and a still life by the Dutch painter Pieter Gerrits van Roestraten.
In the past, the Dallas Museum of Art has used the hotel for some of its art exhibits, said David Davis, director of public relations.
In its earlier years, the hotel was known as much for its entertainment shows as it was for its accommodations.
“It was a landmark hotel for dining, dancing and entertainment,” said Tony Zoppi, who wrote the entertainment column “Dallas After Dark” . Any important person who came to Dallas stayed at the Adolphus.”
The hotel’s shows were presented in the now defunct Century Room, which at one time operated a retractable ice rink for skating shows. The Century Room has since been converted into the parking drive in front of the hotel.
“It was a beautiful room,” Mr. Zoppi recalled. “Everybody wore a coat and tie of course, and the women wore beautiful dresses and furs.”

After reading this, I now know why it was so special to me. I had no idea about all these things at the time as I was such a young girl, but I know my Mother did. The world would be a very dull place without our memories. There are those wonderful times and experiences in our minds that we can recall and relive whenever we like. I'm very thankful for that.

XOXO, Pcasso

REUNIONS, A BLACK AND WHITE GALA, A CLEAN SWEEP AND ONE BAD APPLE

I have had a very busy past few weeks. I have not been posting things to my blog and now I'm a little behind.

Frank's graduating class from Baylor University College of Dentistry celebrated their 50th anniversary in Dallas. It was wonderful to see all the faces that we knew back then and sad to find several of them missing. Once you reach the half-century mark, you realize how much so many things have changed in your life and the lives of others.

The meeting was at the Dental School but the social events were held at the Adolpohus Hotel in downtown Dallas. It's a lovely hotel and a wonderful place for a gathering such as this as you can see.

We spent the night in Dallas and stayed at The Mansion on Turtle Creek. We have stayed there before and it is always such a treat. It's a wonderful small hotel that's top drawer and you are treated like royalty from the time you drive up until you leave.

You are greeted at the entrance by a staff person and they know your name when you drive up. Since they didn't know what kind of car we were driving, I have NO idea how they knew who we were. Just smart people, I guess ;-)

The Mansion was once the palatial home of a Texas cotton magnate and Caroline Hunt has turned it into one of if not the finest and most prestigeous hotels in Dallas. She's head of the Rosewood Corporation. Our room was magnificent and every small detail was taken care of, even to fresh cut orchids in the room.

I'm just sorry that we couldn't stay there a month! I can get used to this luxury very quickly. I love to be pampered, don't you ?

It is with a heavy heart that I regret to say that I have severed my business relationship with Canvas by Canvas. That's all I can say at present, but at least I'm out of a very stressful situation.

I cannot tell you how much this saddens me. It has broken my heart to have to do this as most of the women in this group mean the world to me. I couldn't wait to get together with them to laugh, sometimes cry, act silly on our paint-outs and live life in general to the fullest. That now will be taken away and there will always be a void in my life because of it, but this is my choice and I am truly sorry that I cannot remain a part of this group of loving and talented women. I will continue to paint on my own and hopefully grow with this amazing talent that God has given me at this late stage of my life.

And speaking of painting AND photography, I have donated one of my photographs that I took in China to the Arlington Museum of Art for auction at their annual Gala this coming weekend. We will be attending this wonderful event with friends as we have for the past several years. The proceeds from this gathering go to support the Museum and it's such a worthwhile cause. This year it's called "Black and White", so I thought this black and white photograph would be appropriate.

The title of my photograph is "A Clean Sweep" and it just dawned on me that by resigning from Canvas by Canvas, I have made a clean sweep and will have a fresh start with my art. Is this coincidence or what? It never occurred to me at the time I entitled my photograph and gave it to the Museum for their fund raiser. The Lord works in mysterious ways!

I have submitted a piece of my work in a competition at the Park Cities Presbyterian Church in Dallas that is entitled "One Bad Apple". The event this year is called "Beginnings", and the paintings that are entered are supposed to represent something from the first 3 chapters of Genesis. I selected to depict my interpretation of the Fall of Man with this painting.

I was required to give a description about what I was representing in my painting and this is what I wrote. "Satan came to Eve in the form of a Serpent. I have used the apple to represent Eve, though the scriptural verbiage was fruit, not an apple to illustrate that it only takes one rotten apple to ruin the entire bushel. Satan tempted Eve with the fruit, and she, in turn tempted Adam, which was going against the word of God ... hence the fall of mankind." Please keep your fingers crossed that they will accept my entry in this competition.

I want to thank each of you so much for supporting me in my journey that I am taking down this path in the art world. You are each very special to me and I thank God for your friendship.

I am still in the book and Bible study at my church and learning so much. I am thankful for the priests there and the guidance that I get from them.

I will continue to post here when I have something to say. I'm very involved with church, family and art, so I'm sure I can't stay away from these writings very long and I enjoy sharing with you and hope you enjoy reading them.

Have a wonderful rest of the week. Until then ....

XOXO, Pcasso

BOOK, BUCKET, BIBLE AND BFF

I haven't been blogging for a while ... too busy with goodness knows what but time does fly when you're having fun!
For starters, I am now involved in a Book/ Bible Study at our church and it's fascinating! We are studying Anne Rice's book, "Christ the Lord ... Out of Egypt" along with a study of scripture. Even though Rice's book is fiction, she has done a lot of research and it is about the years between Christ's birth and the start of his ministry on earth as seen through Christ's eyes as a young child and man. We read along with an audio tape of the book for an hour and then enter into a discussion with theology books as well as scripture to try to find out where she came up with some of her theories and ideas. It's really extremely fascinating. It's also gotten me in the mood to pull out my photographs from my trips to Egypt as well as Israel and see if there is something there I want to paint. I shot all of those images back in the days before I went to digital imagery, so since they're all slides, I have to drag the blasted projector out. Oh well ... anything for the sake of art!

This study takes up my Mondays and I'm busy all day Sunday with church and Bible study. We're studying the Apocrypha with Father Matkin leading the study. He's also the priest who is leading the book study on Mondays.

The Apocrypha are texts of uncertain authenticity or writings where the authorship is questioned. In Judeo-Christian theology, the term apocrypha refers to any collection of scriptural texts that falls outside the canon. Given that different denominations have different ideas about what constitutes canonical scripture, there are several different versions of the apocrypha. During sixteenth-century controversies over the biblical canon the word "apocrypha" acquired a negative connotation, and it has become a synonym for "spurious" or "false". This usage usually involves fictitious or legendary accounts that are plausible enough to commonly be considered as truth. For example, the Parson Weems account of George Washington and the cherry tree is considered apocryphal.

During the birth of Christianity, some of the Jewish apocrypha that dealt with the coming of the Messianic kingdom became popular in the rising Jewish-Christian communities. Occasionally these writings were changed or added to, but on the whole it was found sufficient to reinterpret them as conforming to a Christian viewpoint. Christianity eventually gave birth to new apocalyptic works, some of which were derived from traditional Jewish sources. Some of the Jewish apocrypha were part of the ordinary religious literature of the early Christians. This was not strange, as the large majority of Old Testament references in the New Testament are taken from the Greek Septuagint, which is the source of the deuterocanonical books as well as most of the other biblical apocrypha.

This appears as though it will be a very interesting study. Even though I've been involved in the study of scripture most of my adult life, I've never really studied the Apocryrpha, so I'm really looking forward to it. Father Matkin is an excellent preacher and teacher, so I should learn a lot.The beginning of the week the doorbell rang and Frank came into the media room with a box for me. We made friends with some wonderful people on our China trip and Helen and I became New BFF's (those of you who text know that that means ;-) She is not only a Doctor of Psychology, she is also and artist and a jewelry maker! How's that for the whole nine yards when it comes to talent!

When I opened the box, I discovered that she had made me this lovely necklace and earrings as a special surprise! The necklace and earrings are sterling silver with Lampwork Glass beads that she made.

The art of beadmaking by winding molten glass around a steel mandrel is often referred to as "Lampworking". This is because the early glass beadmakers in Venice used oil lamps as their heat source for melting the glass. Today, it's more common to use torches, such as the minor burner , a torch that uses a mix of propane as the fuel and oxygen as an accelerant, to get a precise flame that allows control of the heat in the glass as it melts. The pendant is hanging from an opal encased in silver. It's extremely beautiful and I will treasure it forever.

I wanted to do something special for her in return and couldn't decide what to do. After much though, I remembered the card that she had sent with the jewelry and there was such a sweet note written in it. When I read it again, I looked carefully at the front of the card and loved the design. It had special meaning for me at this particular time since CbC, my art group, is working on a painting of apples for competition. I decided that this card had to mean something to her for her to send it, so I painted my rendition of the card for her as a little thank you gift.

I included another little surprise for her in the same package as well, but that's our secret :-)

Then ... the next day, as I was looking through some web sites, I went to a page where I had entered a piece of my artwork, and lo and behold ... my painting was on the front page of their newsletter. What a WONDERFUL and unexpected surprise. I entered this competition about 2 months ago and had forgotten about it until day before yesterday. I seriously doubt if it will win anything but who knows. Stranger things have happened! If you remember I did this painting from one of the photographs that I took at a porcelain factory in China.

This afternoon we went to see the movie,"The Bucket List". It was a wonderful and endearing story about two terminally ill cancer patients who make a list of the things that they want to do before they die. The reviews for this movie weren't as good as they should have been in my opinion, but what do the people who write reviews really know! I think we personally have an idiot that writes the movie reviews for the Fort Worth paper. The movie really touched both Frank's and my hearts. After all, how can you possibly miss with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman!

We have the book, "The Thousand Places to See Before You Die" and we're working long and hard on that list. Amazingly enough, we've been to over half of the places that are listed! Can't wait to see the other half. Hope we don't have to make a Bucket List before that happens!

All in all it's been a wonderful week. We start our days with exercise at the fitness center at our hospital. I burn off enough calories that my lunch is usually a freebie calorie wise. I also must add that I feel 110% better since I started this program 8 months ago. I never dreamed that I would say that I like to exercise but I'm beginning to really enjoy it.

I look forward to hearing from some of you and hope that enjoy ready about daily life in our small corner of this wonderful world.

XOXO, Pcasso

PAINTINGS, PUPPIES AND PRINCES

Today has been a great day. After exercising, I had a dental appointment and then came home to work on a painting that I started yesterday morning. If you remember, Harold McDuff Salazar spent a couple of days with us earlier in the week so his family could all go to a friend's home for New Year's Eve and New Year's day. Well ... we enjoyed him SO much that we hated to see him go home. Actually, I started having serious puppy withdrawal, so I decided to paint his portrait from a photograph I took on New Years Day. He looked so regal sitting there that I decided to call him Prince Harry ... a name that definitely suits him! This is my first attempt at painting a dog and I'm really pleased with it. Of course, when you have a subject this cute, how can you possibly miss!

When I came in from my studio at nearly sunset, I found that I had another very pleasant surprise waiting for me on my computer. I have a young Austrian friend named Simone who now lives in Barcelona. I haven't heard from her in a while and I Emailed her this morning. It seems that she had been thinking about us as well, so she told me all about the current adventures that she has been enjoying. We met her parents many years ago and we have visited them in Austria and they have visited with us in Texas. When we went to see them in Austria her father, Hugo, spoke very limited English, so Simone came home from college and was our translator. It was a wonderful time. When we were in Spain last year, I took her a portrait that I had painted of her as a surprise.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we weren't able to spend as much time with her in Barcelona on that trip as we had planned to, but that's a whole different blog! Anyway, as you can see from this photograph, my painting of her doesn't begin do her beauty justice! I might also add that she's just as sweet and nice as she is beautiful. She's a very special young woman!Tomorrow is the beginning of the play-off games, so I will probably be a football widow for a while. That will give me the perfect excuse to paint some more.

Have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back in touch soon.

XOXO, Pcasso

REFLECTIONS AND REMEMBERANCES

Today has been one of those interesting and wonderful but not too busy days. There was a meeting at the Diocese of Fort Worth and I was going to go with Frank to check on some of my paintings there. However, things don't always work out the way you expect them to, so after a quick bite of lunch, I came back home and headed for my studio. It's the free-standing building at the back of our lot and a wonderful place to get away from it all and paint until my heart's content. It's climate controlled, with a TV set, stereo system, telephone, computer, refrigerator and all the art supplies that a painter could ever want. Thanks to my surprise gift of a Porta-Potty at Christmas time, I now have all the comforts of home. All that is missing is Harry ;-)This was the first time in several weeks that I have even picked up a brush and I was suffering from art withdrawal. I am still working from photographs from our trip to China. I have a feeling that this will be a never ending source of material. I also have over 20,000 transparencies that I have shot all over the world over the past 30+ years in my studio, so I have material that I will never get around to painting! All I have to do is set up my projector (doesn't that sound antiquated in this time of cyberspace an electronics) and take myself to another world that I have visited, from Egypt to Antarctica, Tuscany to Alaska, Greece to Australia. When I look at these images, they bring back to mind wonderful memories of times past. I could paint every day for the rest of my life and not run out of subjects. Guess I'd better get started :-)

Today I elected to paint on 300 pound paper that I treated with texture to give it a finish that feels almost like leather. I used acrylic and painted this young Chinese woman admiring herself in her mirror. The idea came from a photograph that I took while we were in Shanghai. The young women in China are lovely and always wonderful subjects to paint. The painting itself is long and thin, just like the women there. It's different from most of my paintings, 10 x 22 inches, has no black edges, but I felt that this particular painting called for this format.It can be framed without glass and looks like an oil painting even though it's actually painted in acrylic. I hope you like it. I call it "Reflections".

It's time for me to go and fix our dinner. I'm sure that I'll write more in a day or two. Have a great rest of the week and be sure and check out our web page at CanvasbyCanvas.com

XOXO, Pcasso

HAPPY NEW YEAR WITH HARRY

Happy New Year to each one of you! I wish you an exciting and healthy 2008.
We have had a wonderful New Year so far. Family was here during part of the day yesterday and we have had the privilege of keeping our latest and newest grandson, Harold McDuff Salazar while the younger Salazar family did their traditional thing for the holiday. Each year they go to their good friend's home with all of the children and they play games, sip champagne and then spend the night. Beth and Jennifer have been friends all their lives and now their children are all best friends, so it's a wonderful tradition to keep going for this generation and hopefully many more to come.

We decided to stay home as we have had many years of parties and late nights. I cooked us a wonderful pot roast with potatoes, carrots and gravy and we had hot fudge sundaes for dessert. At midnight we heard these loud sounds and discovered that it was a grandiose fireworks display at the ballpark and it went on for over 15 minutes. It was glorious. What more could one ask for on New Year's Eve!

For many years in the past, Frank would always get this mysterious virus that lasted from about 6:00 p.m. until midnight every New Year's Eve. He was miraculously cured the next morning in time to go to the New Year's Day parade in downtown Dallas. We have been fortunate enough to be able to do special things during the year, so New Year's Eve has never been that special to us. The past several years we've celebrated in friend's homes or entertained in our own, so just staying home with the puppy and having a delicious dinner and a good bottle of wine was enough for us this year. Do you think our age is starting to show???

One of Frank's favorite things in the world next to a football game is a parade. I don't think he's ever missed a Cotton Bowl parade. We would bundle the children up when they were little and head for Dallas very early on New Year's morning so we could have a good place to see the parade and drink hot chocolate and eat donuts. When they all got older, we would leave Dad on the corner and go into a local hotel and have Bloody Mary's inside where it was warm while he watched the parade. Afterward we would all go to breakfast at Brennan's. That was a tradition of ours for years.

Today was different but no exception. We watched the Rose Bowl Parade from start to finish in High Definition. Those of you who watched it know what I mean! The crowds start to gather very early and apparently it was cold in California this year.

The Tournament of Roses Parade has followed the same route for many decades. It starts by going north on South Orange Grove Boulevard, beginning at Ellis Street. Twenty-four hours ahead of time, the entire environs of the neighborhood streets are sealed off and reserved for the massive parade marshaling of the dozens of floats that are participating. On parade morning, it proceeds east on Colorado Boulevard to Sierra Madre Boulevard. Turning north on Sierra Madre, it ends at Paloma Street. In total, this route is 5½ miles long; the assembled bands, horse units, and floats take approximately 2.5 hours to pass by.

The floats are exquisite. Every square inch of the exposed surface of a float entered in the Rose Parade strictly must be covered with flowers or other natural materials. These other decorative applicants include bark, seed and leaves.

Many floats, along with drive train, include computer-controlled robotic mechanisms, to animate the floats. Most float drivers can only see the ground below them. An observer communicates by intercom to the driver. Most observers are hidden within the float and have limited visibility. Each float has a Tournament Member assigned to it who shepherds the float from the float barn to the formation area area and down the parade route. Most ride on motor scooters although some walk. They communicate with the float's observer by hand signals or radio.
In the days following Christmas, the natural additions to the float are applied by volunteers or hired workers. Many people end each day covered in glue and petals. Delicate flowers are even set up in individual vials of water, set into the float one-by-one.

The Tournament of Roses is the largest consumer of flowers in the world, and flowers arrive from all over the world.
It is estimated that it takes 60 volunteers working 10 hours a day for 10 days to decorate one float.

The cost of flowers are included in the total cost of the float and paid for by the float sponsor. It is our plan to try to go to California and see this parade. We have a book, "1000 Places to See Before You Die" and I think Pasadena and the Rose Parade should be on that list!

Harry got a little bored with this after a while, so he started making faces at the TV and acting silly.He has learned to get up in the window in the media room, so that kept him busy for a while since he could see the squirrels scampering around outside.

Since he really isn't a football fan, he finally gave up and curled up on the ottoman in front of the TV set and took a long winter nap.

Once again, I want to wish you mostly a healthy and then a very happy New Year. It's been a wonderful 24 hours for us and I'm looking forward to the coming year. You'll be hearing from me again soon.

XOXO, Pcasso