This month of May started with me finding three four-leaf clovers in two days at home. Yesterday coming back from Memphis I stopped at Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, to give the dog a chance to do what dogs need to do. I found a total of five four-leaf clovers before we got back in the car and left. This morning I found one more! This must be a good omen for a good decade.
Were there really no wells in Amsterdam in the late 1600s? While researching material for my book about Maria Sybilla Merian I realized that not once had I come across any reference to wells. Nothing was mentioned in the books I read. I had not seen any marked on old maps of the city. Oh there was plenty of water with all of those canals, but I suspected that the canal water was salty since they did connect with the sea. So where did the residents of Amsterdam get their drinking water? Who could I ask?
Last weekend in Columbia, MO, I tried Tiger Ice Cream at MU. It was quite tasty and the scoops were the biggest I’ve seen in awhile.
Last night we went to Andy’s where I had my favorite––a concrete with raspberry topping (which means the topping is all mixed in). Delicious.
But my all time favorite is the ice cream I had in the little town of Wilster, Germany, at the Eiscafe Rialto across from the church. It was a dish called Spaghetti Ice Cream; looked like real spaghetti with tomato sauce! Tasted fantastic! I loved the combination of looks and taste. And if I’m ever back in Hamburg, I will definitely take the train to Wilster for more ice cream at the Eiscafe Rialto.
I have taken Maria Sybilla Merian and her family from Frankfurt, Germany, where she was born to Nürnberg, back to Frankfurt, on to Castle Waltha in Friesland, northern Holland and now to Amsterdam.
Side view of Sculpture
While in Chicago I also wanted to find the Bat Column, a steel and aluminum sculpture designed by Claes Oldenburg. It is on the grounds of the Social Security Building on West Madison Street. My friends and I walked down Madison Street, keeping an eye out for this column. Unknown to me, my friends thought it was something else and were looking for another kind of bat column. They were quite surprised to discover the sculpture was a baseball bat instead of a column of bats–the flying kind!
I always enjoy Claes Oldenburg’s gigantic sculptures of ordinary things. : )
The sole reason I toured Albrecht Dürer's house in Nürnberg, Germany, was because I had read there was a display of his paint and where it came from. Now Dürer lived 170 years before Maria Sybilla Merian did, but things were slow to change back in those days; I figured the source of paints would still be the same. I had already spent two and a half years researching the old paint recipes to find a few which would be usable in the classroom during the study of art in the Middle Ages. (I was bored with the time period and needed a way to "liven it up" 'cause it's a sure bet that if the teacher's already bored, the students will be triply bored, and the last thing we need is bored kids in the classroom.)
I was delighted to see that what I had read was confirmed here.
The blue pigment in the picture on top is azurite; the powdered form was kept on the half shell, it's source is the azurite rock behind. The red pigment was new to me–it is called Drachenblut, or Dragon's Blood. It comes from a red resin from the fruit of a palm tree found in Asia.
The center picture shows a pigment made from roots of the Rubia plant–also new to me–on the left. On the right is a dish of cochineal bugs which, when crushed, make a purply-red pigment. (And, yes, the dried bugs do stink if you get your nose too close to them!)
The bottom picture shows the beautiful bright red pigment derived from Cinnabar rocks from Spain.
One added note: most rocks lose their color when crushed and cannot be used to make paint. Those that do retain their color make very lovely paint, indeed.
I’m getting very tired of all the rain, storms, high winds, and, of course, tornadoes! It has rained so much I haven’t been able to get my rain barrel made; isn’t that ironic! I’m sure that when I finally get it all done…well, we’ll probably have a drought and there will be no rain to catch. Seems to be the way things often go around here.
I did become aware during this last dash to the basement as the tornado sirens screamed that what I take to the basement with me differs vastly from one time to the next. When we have a bit more warning and I have time, I do a good job of packing and making sure I have flashlights and candles and matches; shoes and jacket just in case; other items of value which seem to vary quite a lot. Sometimes its family information, photos, artwork–often my current project. This last time all I took was the manuscript I’m working on and the backup flashdrive and my cell phone. And this time we took not only our dog and her car seat, but also the visiting neighborhood cat. Ya just never know.