Slippen' and a Slidin'

OMG! I thought last week's late winter visit was a bitch. But this one blew in off the lake (Wind gusts over 35mph). It brought rain, freezing rain and drizzle and topped it off with wet snow. I guess all it needed was a giant cherry.

My friend and I braved the wet rain to attend the monthly free film for Milwaukee Film members at the Oriental Theater. She braved it, and she was driving. Arriving at the theater, the sidewalks were a mire of slippery slush. After the film, we were greeted by a couple inches of accumulated wet snow.

What complicates this lake-effect weather is the hard surfaces are not cold enough to support snow. Therefore layer on the direct surface of the roads and sidewalks is slush, and the accumulation on the top is wet snow. The result is a slippery surface akin to walking on tiny ball bearings.

Another good week painting.

Reaching Out

16 x 20 Pastel

Songbird

16 x 20 Pastel

My Classic Movie Of This Week: Ben Hur

My memory of this film is mostly about the amazing chariot race scenes.

This film opens with a reenactment of the three kings arriving n Bethlehem to see the child Jesus. The character of Jesus will be seen numerous times, but we never see his face and rarely does he speak. Jesus's rise to prominence and his eventual crucifixion are depicted as it eventually leads to the conclusion of the deeply powerful journey we experience with Judah Ben Hur (Charlton Heston).

In the beginning, he is a powerful rich prince of Judea. Judea has been conquered, as much of the world had, by the Romans.

He greets his boyhood friend Messala (Steven Boyd), who has returned as the commander of the occupying military. His failure to turn traitor and aid Messala in rooting out rebels in Judea finds our hero as a rowing slave on a Roman battleship and his mother and sister in prison.

Years later, Judah returns to Jeudea with anger and vengeance on his mind. While is somewhat successful in his defeat of Messala, his vengeance is not complete until he reunites with his mother and sister.

The conclusion of the journey is when his hardened heart is replaced with hope and forgiveness due to the influence of the teachings of Jesus.

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Ring The Bell

It appears there is a tradition in the radiology department at Ascension Hospital that patients, upon completing their course of treatment, ring a bell. ( We know not for whom this bell tolls.) Ring the Bell with My Sweetheart Jeanne. Jeanne drove me to all but two of the appointments. Pam Frautchi took me to the other two. Today, after being zapped thirty-two times, I rang the bell. This begins a roughly one-month recovery period where the effects of the radiation abate and, I'm assured, a return to normalcy occurs. In my case, I anticipate more energy and greater awareness. Books, Books, & More Books I am simultaneously celebrating the end of the third year of volunteering for the All Saints Hunger Book Sale. Next week, we will wrap up the preparation for the sale and open our doors on August 3 for the public. I ran into this humourous but quite accurate cartoon on a T-Shirt that shows most of the volunteer's sentiments at this point. If you think the printed and bound p...

One of my latest efforts. Sketch: The Lady Is Blue Gouache 9 X 12 Reporting: I enjoyed a pleasant evening with my friend Michelle Mooney. I took her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday and to thank her for the many first-rate haircuts she's given me. We were surprised at the number of people who dined alfresco in the balmy night air. Whatever we've done to please Mother Nature, she had deemed acceptable by giving us a shot of summer just when late fall weather was wrapping her fingers around our throat. If I have one complaint about the friendly confines of The County Claire, it's the noise level that makes it difficult to converse. The rumble is an acoustical problem with the customers speaking in normal conversational tones. This is without audible TV showing some game or background music selected by a dance DJ. I know! We should have eaten outside, where the only noise is the occasional 14 bus snorting by. Maybe It's Me Since my two soccer teams are not doing...

It's time again.

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...

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