44 of 100: Mary Delany, collagist

Yet more flowers: today, by the Englishwoman Mary Delany (1700–1788), who when she was 72 noticed the similarity between the petals of a geranium and a piece of red paper she spotted lying on a table. She took up some scissors and soon had created a convincing facsimile of the flower. And on she went, fashioning nearly 1,000 "cut flowers" or, as she called them, "mosaicks" before failing eyesight forced her to stop in 1782. The collection, known as the Flora Delanica, filled ten albums, which came to the British Museum in 1897, bequeathed by her niece, and today are among the most-viewed items in the Department of Prints and Drawings. (The entire collection is browsable here.) Her skill was such that the great 18th-century botanist Sir Joseph Banks declared her collages to be "the only imitations of nature" he had ever seen from which he "could venture to describe botanically any plant without the least fear of committing an error."

Sometimes she touched up her creations with watercolor, or incorporated a bit of plant material itself—as in this winter cherry or Chinese lantern (Physalis sp.). 

But mostly, they were simply paper. Here are a few more of her creations. And to think, she started at age 72! Maybe there's hope for me yet.

Centaurea cyanis, 1779

Aloe perfoliata, 1780

Cyclamen europaeum, 1777

Helianthus annuus (Great Sun-flower), 1772–82

Paeonia tenuifolia, 1778

Rosa gallica, 1782

Pancratium maritimum (Sea Daffodil), 1778

Passiflora laurifolia: bay leaved, 1777
(with over 230 paper petals in the bloom)

Crinum zeylanicum (Asphodil Lilly), 1778

43 of 100: Howler (mini-)reunion

I have written about my virtual writing group the Howlers elsewhere (here and here, for example). We have been meeting now—I should say "meeting" with quotation marks: every morning we check in on WhatsApp and then write, on our own stuff (or in my case, do whatever), for 90 minutes, all together, usually with Sherilyn as timekeeper—for... fourteen years now? (I'll find out. Kim will know.) We all met at Antioch University in their creative writing program, graduating respectively in 2005, 2006, and 2007. Kim and Sherilyn have Kauai connections; I was Kim's welcome committee when she started in the program. And we've stayed in touch—every day, except when travel or illness interferes—for most of the years since. It's a gift, of friendship and support.

And today, for the first time in years, the three of us met in actual person, all together! 

Our reunion started shortly after 8 a.m. on the shore of San Francisco Bay, outside Kim's hotel south of SFO. They spotted me and waved, off up ahead, while I stopped and took in the beauty of the place—the bay at low tide, wading birds dabbling in the mud:

After big hugs, we proceeded to do Howler-y things: starting with a hearty breakfast at Christie's in Burlingame, then a bookstore (Barnes & Noble, but still: bricks and mortar) and an art store (I bought some DIY 3D paper sculptures: a dragonfly, a lemur, and a chameleon—I will be sure to feature them here when they're done), before Sherilyn had to peel off around noon. 

Oh, but there were gifts: from Kim to Sherilyn and me—Kauai Salt Pond salt (which came with an amusing TSA story), Anahola granola, and a little handmade  accordion-style artist book, mine featuring insects and caterpillars as decoration. I feel so rich! 

Now just the two of us, Kim and I made a quick Trader Joe's run for snacks for her week in the mountains (she's attending a nature journaling workshop near Lake Tahoe with John Muir Laws that sounds very swell), followed by another bookstore stop (a much bigger Barnes & Noble), before heading to Coyote Point Recreation Area for a walk (and an International Geocaching Day souvenir cache). At 2 I dropped her back at her hotel, and the reunion was over—short but sweet. I then joined the throng of traffic southbound. (What took me 1.5 hours this morning stretched to over 3 on the return trip...)

Meanwhile, David has flown off to Cleveland and then Oslo for ten days, so it's just me and the dog and the cats. Fortunately, the fridge is loaded with leftovers. Maybe I'll get some serious work done? One can dream.

(I wish we Howlers had remembered to take a picture of the three of us, but we were so wrapped up in chatting and browsing and shopping, and then whoosh, Sherilyn was gone, that... it didn't happen. Next time, though—which I hope isn't as long in coming—for sure.)

 

42 of 100: Li-Young Lee, poet

Today's prompts for my poetry group were about joy. We all especially liked this one, by Li-Young Lee, a poet new to me. (The image, Asian Peaches, is by Jaxine Cummins.)

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. 

And here are a couple more. I like his themes and imagery; I shall be seeking him out.

Eating Alone

I've pulled the last of the year's young onions.
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold,
brown and old. What is left of the day flames
in the maples at the corner of my
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes.
By the cellar door, I wash the onions,
then drink from the icy metal spigot.

Once, years back, I walked beside my father
among the windfall pears. I can't recall
our words. We may have strolled in silence. But
I still see him bend that way-left hand braced
on knee, creaky-to lift and hold to my
eye a rotten pear. In it, a hornet
spun crazily, glazed in slow, glistening juice.

It was my father I saw this morning
waving to me from the trees. I almost
called to him, until I came close enough
to see the shovel, leaning where I had
left it, in the flickering, deep green shade.

White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas
fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame
oil and garlic. And my own loneliness.
What more could I, a young man, want.

The Weight of Sweetness

No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.

Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness
equals three of any of these gravities.

See a peach bend
the branch and strain the stem until
it snaps.
Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness
and death so round and snug
in your palm.
And, so, there is
the weight of memory:

Windblown, a rain-soaked
bough shakes, showering
the man and the boy.
They shiver in delight,
and the father lifts from his son’s cheek
one green leaf
fallen like a kiss.

The good boy hugs a bag of peaches
his father has entrusted
to him.
Now he follows
his father, who carries a bagful in each arm.
See the look on the boy’s face
as his father moves
faster and farther ahead, while his own steps
flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors
under the weight
of peaches.

41 of 100: Mona Caron, phytograffiti artist

Yet another gem I encountered in the book I've been working on (and am now almost done with, so I'll have to look for new inspiration), the Swiss-born, San Francisco–based street artist Mona Caron, who creates beautiful giant murals showcasing "the rebellious resilience of weeds" worldwide. She has many links, and some stories about their creation, including community involvement, on her website. She also does murals about history and place. Now I'm going to need to make a field trip to San Francisco to see some of her work in situ.

Anyway, here are some of her plant murals. Click to see them large. They're great!

The only one I made a note of location: Mumbai

And here's a short video about her and her weed art, from 2014:

40 of 100: Scientific microphotography

While searching for examples of diatom microphotography by J. D. Möller (1844–1907), I stumbled on the Nikon Small World Competition, which began in 1975 "as a means to recognize and applaud the efforts of those involved with photography through the light microscope." There are some fabulous microphotographers—and fascinating subject matter—out there.

I'll start with Mr. Möller himself, who, in the lae 1800s, painstakingly arranged diatoms on glass slides in order to photograph them, both as scientific documents and as works of art:

But now, having been sufficiently distracted from my initial quest, here, quite randomly, are some of the images from last year's Nikon competition that especially appealed to my eye:

Stefan Eberhard, Caffeine crystals 
(polarized light, 25x magnification)

Satu Paavonsalo and Dr. Sinem Karaman, Blood and
lymphatic vasculature in the ear skin of an adult mouse
(confocal, 10x magnification)

Marek Miś, Stomata in peace lily (Spathiphyllum sp.)
leaf epidermis
(polarized light, 40x magnification)

Dr. Diego García, Carbon nanotubes
(stereomicroscopy, 30x magnification)

John-Oliver Dum, Sunflower pollen on an acupuncture needle
(image stacking, 40x magnification)

Hassanian Qambari and Jayden Dickson, Rodent optic nerve head
showing asrocytes (yellow), contractile proteins (red), and
retinal vasculature (green)
(confocal, fluorescence, image stacking; 20x magnification)

Frank Fox, Marine organism (Pyrocystis lunula, Dinophyceae)
(differential interference contrast, 100x magnification)

Alison Pollack, Slime mold (Diderma tigrinum)
(image stacking, reflected light; 10x magnification)

Dr. Nathan P. Myhrvold, Trichinella cyst in pork muscle
(brightfield, image stacking; 10x magnification)

Drs. Grigorii Timin and Michel Milinkovitch,
Dermal collagen in embryonic snake scales
(confocal, 63x magnification)

I could go on and on: last year's competition had 20 top placers (the one above of the rodent optic nerve head placed 1st), eight honorable mentions, and 58 "images of distinction." And that's just one year. There's a gallery for each year beginning in 1975. A wealth of beauty and fascination!

But I'll stop here. Go check out the link. There is also a Small World in Motion Competition—yes, macro videos—which launched in 2011. No end to the fun! Seriously!

Oh wait: I wasn't done after all. No sooner had I posted this than I got roped into doing some Vote Forward letter writing (writing to prospective voters urging them to vote—nothing partisan, though I may have wanted to have a strong word or two...), and what was the sheet of stamps I was given? This:

Beautiful, no? Who can resist the exquisite abstraction of this amazing world seen up very, very close?

39 of 100: Early American currency

In the book I'm proofreading, I had to flag an image of early US currency, created by Benjamin Franklin—who, you will recall, was a printer by trade. (See if you can figure out why I flagged it.)

But the mention of "nature printing" in the caption got me curious, so I had to go searching. And I found that Franklin did print currency, and he used actual leaves, to thwart counterfeiters. Here's a sheet from 1779 (I believe it's the image I should have seen): 

It's unclear to me exactly how this would deter counterfeiters—couldn't they simply make their own one-of-a-kind nature prints and call them legit? But whatever. The currency itself is gorgeous. (Here is an article titled "What Ben Franklin Learned While Fighting Counterfeiters," with a few more examples of his work—and, perhaps, an answer to that question.)

Note the warning: To Counterfeit, is DEATH

Then, of course, I started looking at other very early currency. And it, too, is beautiful. So here are some examples, from each of the original 13 colonies—one side each, except at the end (click to see them large):

South Carolina

Rhode Island

Pennsylvania

North Carolina

New York

Connecicut

Massachusetts

Maryland

Delaware

Georgia

New Jersey

Virginia

New Hampshire (recto)

New Hampshire (verso)

And to go even earlier, and in metal, here are some pine tree shillings from 1652:

For more on Early American Currency, I send you to Wikipedia, my best friend.