Passing

I. Passing

Below: From The Whales Go By, 1959, pictures Paul Galdone, words Fred Phleger.
The book's whales have migrated from the Bering Sea to their winter home...

"The way is not big. We have to swim in line to get in. One after the other. It is not deep. There are waves. We can just make it. We have come a long way. We are happy!"

Another contemporary of my Auntie Vi (b. August 1925) has died--Tony Bennett (b. August 1926).
A paisan! Anthony Dominick Benedetto--my uncle's first name, and my father's middle name from which my sister gets her name. Bennett's parents came from Italy around the same time as Vi's parents, my grandparents.

My book display at work is a jumble this week--no theme.
I'd only had enough books on the topic to create a mini-World Cup display...  An unknown customer added the Tony Bennett bio--Life Is a Gift–– from the biographies section. I'd forgotten we had it.

I'm touched when people enter into the BOOK's like that.
Usually....
One customer (I know who) maintains a power struggle with me over Lord of the Rings books: he moves them to the sci-fi section, I move them back to literature. On we go until someone mercifully buys the set.
But even that I think is funny, not annoying.
_______________________

II. Flying

bink & Maura had me over to watch the Women's World Cup last night. USA v. Vietnam.
It was an uneven match--the young Vietnam team's first ever World Cup--and it's never much fun to watch those.
But I did enjoy and admire the Vietnam goalie--Tran Thi Kim Thanh––she was constantly in the air, fending off 28 (!) shots on goal.
Below center, in yellow: [photo via NYT]

Soccer is the only sport I much enjoy watching, and mostly only because it's fun to watch World Cup's players from around the world--beautiful bodies in flight.
I won't be watching much of this one though. Because the games are in NZ & Australia, most of them are played in what is the the middle of the night here. But a few are at 8 p.m. central, including this one.

III. Painting

Just for the record--this is the board I got from Asst Man (AM) to kick off our three-way art collaboration with E. (My croc to the left, for size.) As I did with my board, he prepared a canvas with only a hint of direction.
(E. had collaged a scene to kick hers off. It's with AM for its 2nd stage. The idea is there are no rules, it's free-form. We're each so different in personality and art styles, we'll see how that goes. Even if the final art isn't stunning, the process should be fun. Maybe. I'm impressed that we all got out of the gate anyway!)

bink had given us the boards with some acrylic painting on them--I love that AM had scraped back to reveal some of the color.
Reminds me of  when I was little--covering paper in crayon colors, layering black crayon on top, and scratching back. Magic!

Off to work. Wishing a good weekend to you all.