It's raining hard this morning, a dreary, slanty, sideways rain, falling from a slate sky. How many more days until the forsythia lightens up the landscape with that first bit of yellow?

I thought of a morning last fall when I passed a woman planting row after row of bulbs in a New York City park. She smiled when I stopped to look. Daffodils, she said.

It turns out she was part a project that started just after 9/11 when the city yearned for color. A parks volunteer and a parks commissioner thought why not choose flowers as a way to lift people up, to remember and to look forward? A Dutch bulb supplier wanted to help and sent bulbs.

Soon the city had a bulb brigade, thousands of volunteers who, over the years, have spent a bit of their fall planting bulbs in public spaces and parks all over New York City, everywhere.

On this rainy, lonely day,  it's nice to think that hundreds of thousands of bulbs are nestled under the ground, waiting for just the right moment to cheer us.
                                                      ~     ~     ~

http://www.ny4p.org/daffodil-project

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daffodils/

I like wondering where the next bend in the road or the long stretch of tracks

might take me. 

One sky, so very many moods. I can't stop looking.

The Empty Page

We spent Sunday afternoon considering the audacity and beauty of the empty page,
the way it dares you to consider all the possibilities that live 
in that white space, 
and the vision,  the decided determination it takes to fill it,
with a story, a song, a poem or drawings that eventually become 
an animated short film. 

We went to see the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts yesterday. It’s become a bit of a tradition. In the week or so before the Academy Awards, we try to see a collection of one of the short film categories, live action, documentary or animation. We end up having more of a stake in that one award than we do in all the major categories, rooting on a film that lasts perhaps 17 or maybe 11 minutes. 

This year two were tiny and slight but fun, “Fresh Guacamole,” and “Maggie Simpson in 'The Longest Daycare' " and three were tiny and anything but slight:  “Paperman,” the sweet story of guy meets girl, loses girl and finds her again with the help of his ingenuity, a couple hundred paper airplanes and one with a mind of its own; “Adam and Dog,” a visually stunning film about dog who discovers man (Adam) and is loyal to him, even after the man’s loyalty wanes and finally returns. And, “Head Over Heels,” the story of a husband and wife who have grown so far apart, he lives on the floor and she on the ceiling, and what it takes to get us back to the people we love and the people we were. 

This year, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, who directed last year’s Oscar winning animated short film, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” narrated the collection of short films and told the story of their own journey to make their film. Joyce spoke about how they began with an idea and one empty page and another and another, all waiting to be filled and so they started drawing.  Life tossed everything their way over the course of 10 years, gave them every reason to give up, but they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. 

They told every artist wrestling with the blank page to do only one thing:
Fill it. 

                      ~ ~


 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/head-over-heels-oscars-animated-short-film-419900

http://smashinginterviews.com/interviews/authors/william-joyce-interview-peering-inside-the-mind-of-rise-of-the-guardians-producer-and-book-series-author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkJPMsWw6Z8

Who will win best supporting actor?

Best live action short film?

Morning Song

They hide in the thicket of barren branches of the forsythia bushes that fringe the yard. Starlings, I think, or our morning birds because their song begins just after the first light.

Most often they fly off at the very sound of a footstep. If I am utterly quiet, I can step near enough to see six or seven or sometimes 11 or 12 of them in the very middle of the bushes, resting on a branch, then flitting off to another, but always chirping, singing, even on the frostiest of mornings,
such a welcome sound.