Wordless Wednesday

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Katharina  Grosse: One Floor up More Highly

My daughter interacting with the art at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, yesterday.

 Pagan Sphinx Photo © All Rights Reserved

Ruby Tuesday Goes to Boston

I went back over my old files to March when, on a sunny but cool, crisp March day, I visited my daughter who attends Boston University. On these visits, we walk, talk, shop, talk, dine and talk some more. And as always, I take my camera along.  Enjoy!

Getting a good shot of this colorful cyclist, wasn't easily achieved. When he was waiting for the light, there were people and signs in the way and when he took off on green, he flew by me with all the confidence of an urbanite!

Old South Church

Newbury Street

The patio of Kashmir's; an Indian restaurant on Newbury Street

My daughter over lunch at Kashmir's, keeping up with the rest of the world via cell phone.
(I have since been corrected by my lovely lass that we had, in fact, been taking turns talking to her sister in California. "I stand corrected, albeit while sitting!"

Ruby Tuesday features photo entries featuring a little or a lot of red. Click on the link to participate and say hi to Mary for hosting!

What's Goin On

SG2 home for holiday break

Good news from Boston:  my daughter, SG2 (21), a junior at BU, majoring in journalism was offered a paid internship at The Boston Globe, working the city desk. She had mixed feelings about it when trying to make the decision of whether or not to accept it and after her first day (yesterday) she's feeling even more insecure about her ability to handle such a fast-paced news environment. I'm trying to counsel and guide her, as I'm sure her dad is.

She was in tears today, which always wrecks me! Help me out and send good vibes out to my girl, okay?

:-)

All the love,

Pagan Sphinx

Highlights From my Week-end in Boston - Part I

Boston skyline from Boston University campus

click once on images for best viewing size; twice for extra-large and detailed version

This weekend, I visited my daughter, 20 year-old SG2 at Boston University where she is a junior.  Here are some highlights from our trip, including some art from The Museum of Fine Arts. Enjoy.

Student art on a building front on Newbury Street

Newbury Street

Old building reflected in new building

I love the light in this shot.

SG2 and I dug this singer's Amelia Erhart head gear.  ;-)

Sunday
(sunnier and more pleasant)

Entrance to The Museum of Fine Arts

SG2 enjoying some sun on the MFA lawn, while mama took pictures
My favorite work of art.  ;-)

A sculpture in front of the museum, that I've always liked
Appeal to the Great Spirit
Cyrus Edwin Dallin 

One of the museum wings

Some of our favorite art

Paul Signac
French
1863-1953
Antibes, The Pink Cloud
1916

Van Gogh

Henri Matisse
French
Carmelina
1903

Perhaps because I'd never really looked at it closely before, this Davis abstract was among my favorites.  SG2 thought it was "just okay".

Hot Still-Scape for Six Colors - 7th Ave.
1940

Stuart Davis
American Modernist

1892-1964

The painting below, however, really impressed her

Joseph Stella

Old Brooklyn Bridge
c. 1940
American (Italian-born) 
Futurist


Part II coming soon

All the love,
Pagan Sphinx

What's Going On and Bipolar Article (long post; good article)

 (This is one of those blog award virus images that was floating around. I kind of like it to represent my honest scrap today. Thank you to (I think) Utah Savage for sending it the way of The Pagan Sphinx.)

I'm currently experiencing a sort of blog frenzy. In a couple of weeks blogging will become a low-priority for me, as I will be starting two new classes that overlap by a few weeks. There will a lot of travel and much to do and then it's the holidays. My mother has let me know that she is seriously considering visiting for the holidays, from Portugal. She has two little great-grandchildren (my brother's grandchildren). The last time she saw her GGD was when Anna was three months old. I have mixed feelings about her coming in winter. She doesn't do well in the cold or cooped up in my brother's suburban mansion. My house is too old and dusty for her. I'm really very afraid she'll get sick here.

My brother, whom I'll call Dr. Phil, is being a selfish jerk as usual by putting the squeeze on our mother to come for the holidays and otherwise laying a guilt trip on her about how her great-grandchildren are growing up and she's missing it. Ugh. He could go visit her. Dr. Phil, my nephew with the little kids and his wife are very well off. They could collectively more than afford to rent a flippin' villa near my mother's house, if they wanted to. My brother just has made no progress in getting beyond is anger at my parents for having moved back to Portugal for their retirement.  I too was saddened that my children would grow up largely without their grandparents' regular guidance. But I have been over that for many years now. In fact, now that my father is gone, especially, I think my mother is much better off living out the rest of her life in Portugal. She has many family and friends within walking distance, so she doesn't need to drive. She takes the bus and train to medical appointments and if she is truly in need of private transportation, those same family and friends are available to drive her and are, in fact, happy to do so. My brother had been putting a lot of pressure on her and on me to support his "position", to move back to the U.S. And I know that is not what my mother wants. She's told me over the course of a lot of conversations over many years, that that is not what she wants. Why my brother can't accep that must be between him and his shrink. I certainly hope he has one, as he is truly in need. And I am dead serious, not a mean-spirited bone or wish in me. I hope only the best for Dr. Phil ( and that nickname does make me smile a bit wryly).  I just wish he would lay off.

If only you could see Dr. Phil in action. He's tempered himself a bit over the years but I've lost count of how many times he hung up the phone on me in conversations we had a couple of years ago, during a particularly troubling period in my life:  SG1, as I wrote about above, was in one of many psych wards and my husband and I were splitting up. He called to demand information about my daughter's "problem", as he put it. He accused me of "killing our parents" (my father was still living then) by telling them about SG's mental illness. I was fit to be tied and I told him the conversation was over and he ended it himself immediately by hanging up.

The other significant time Dr. Phil hung up on me had to do with his preemptive strike against me over how I should quit my summer school job one week into it (and I really needed the income then) to go care for my mother upon her release from the hospital after gastric cancer surgery. I hadn't even had time to digest (pardon) the news when he's on the phone telling me that I had to go and that doing so would become my "defining moment" (that's why I dubbed him Dr. Phil) He was really busy, you see planning his vacation. When I took issue with his confrontational attitude and not so much with what he was wanting me to do, which I naturally ended up doing because it was the right thing to do for my mother, not because he was brow-beating me into it. And I told him so.

My mother asked my opinion last weekend of whether she should make the trans-Atlantic flight to Boston a couple of weeks before Christmas. I told her that was up to her and how she feels physically and emotionally about the trip and insisted that it should be her decision and her decision only. In typical Maria-Style, she kept she kept urging me to elaborate but I stuck to my line. I am not getting in the middle of that one!

They are writing sudden flurry and frenzy of notes in my medical file these days. It is nothing serious but I'm having to jump through some hoops for the medical system so I can be properly treated for chronic UTIs. If don't know the acronym, I'm glad for you. If you know it all too well, I'd be happy to comiserate. ;-)  I have one more appointment with the handsome Spanish urologist (he wears clogs. I have this thing for men in clogs) heheh.) and then I should be set-up with the proper treatment. I have tried every bloody thing under the sun to take care of the UTIs with more holistic approaches. We'll see what my options are.

SG1 and The Beloved are doing very well!  SG1 and I talk most days.The Americorps stint was really difficult for the first month or so her position, but she made it through with flying colors and really enjoying it. I'm not sure she wants to follow in her mother's footsteps as a teacher of young children, though her placement is at an elementary school where she is a literacy tutor for kindergarten and first grade. She's expressed a mild interest in perhaps being certified to teach high school. I listen and try to be supportive. SG1 is worried that she will not be able to do what she wants to do for graduate school. She is a brilliant girl and always has to have goals. And right now she is where she is and needs to finish this Americorps endeavor. With the economy the way it is, she may even have to do a second year of the program. She has two years to think about what she wants to pursue in graduate school. She mentioned law school again recently, which she hasn't done in a while. It bothers her not to know what she will doing in two years. It's interesting, because it bothers me to know what I'll be doing in two years. ;-)

SG2 is happy to be in Boston. I don't doubt she will stick around those parts when she is done with her studies. She loves the city and also that it's close enough to home that it's not such a big hassle to make the trip. She's very social and has a huge circle of friends. Funny how this kid was so shy when she was a baby, only coming out of her shell in around middle childhood. She has a new boyfriend, whom I'll  name Crocket. I have not yet met him but they are quite inthralled with one another. I've hinted plainly that he visit.  :-)

WP and I are just plain happy together. I love my dearly crazy, socially-inept loving weirdo almost-husband. 

 And yes, the time for slacking will soon reach its end. 

Meanwhile, I have things to share with you. I just found a mailing from CABF - Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation. I don't trust large organizations like this entirely. One critism I've heard of CABF is that they receive generous contributions from Big Pharma and therefore may be more predisposed to advocating drug treatment for children. Which is still a controversial subject among shrinks, teachers, parents and physicians.

My experiences with CABF all involved using their website for informatin when SG1 had the ultimate teen meltdown six years ago and ended up in and out of psychiatric hospitals for the next two years. (Some of you who have read this blog for a while may recall a bit about that.) I found the website to be very helpful and informative and since the correct drug or drugs was the only way to go for my daughter, I read a lot about medications on the site also. I am, in fact, an advocate of people receiving what they need to get better, regardless of the type of condition. Taking the medication route is a personal/family decision.

I was encouraged today to read this article in the newsletter I receive from CABF, about adolescent bipolar disorder:
Young Adults May Outgrow Bipolar Disorder Source: University of Missouri-Columbia press release

This was a slice of my life. I was inspired by Spadoman Joe at  Round Circle.
Thanks, Joe and Peace

Fotos

SG1 in Lisbon

click on photos once, then twice, for optimal viewing

A collection of sort of quaint and charming and European and all of that, to share with you. I chose them quite randomly and was surprised to note that they all have a person in them (only one known to me) and then there is the cat. I very rarely photograph strangers. Other than the black kitty and SG1, the others are all sort of tourist props. Though I think the gentleman in front of the elevator was just a regular local. All of these are from Lisbon and Obidos, Portugal.

Love,
Pagan Sphinx

Who Are You?

I owe the following music choice to having recently seen Keith Moon's jacket at the Boston Hard Rock Cafe; among other things... ;-)

It's a terrible picture, and I suggest you leave it as is. I admit to having concentrated more on my daughter than on the picture taking. And then there was the annoying spot light I couldn't get away from.

I took daughter, 20 and her charming friend Camille out for lunch at The Hard Rock Cafe. I wouldn't have chosen it for myself, but I thought the girls would enjoy it.It's very entertaining to be out and about with two boy magnets. Regretfully I forgot to take a photo of the lovely Camille, whom I met for the first time this weekend.






There will be more pics on my Ruby Tuesday post, which I'll put here at The Pagan Sphinx, so please come to Boston (in the winter time...brrrrrrrrr)

What's Goin' On

A bit of an update...

I'm doing much better. Thank you all so much for your caring and concern. Those five days of being sick took a lot out of me but I went to work yesterday and today and felt a bit tired but otherwise all better. I'm trying to take it easy all week, eat right and get lots of rest before Saturday. I'm going to Boston and staying overnight in the SG2's dorm room. Her roommate will be away for the weekend, so it works well.

I'm looking forward to spending time with my girl. I'm hoping for both good health and good weather. We like to walk and talk when we're together. We have a lot to catch up on.

Tonight I'm going to try to get to a few blogs. I'm behind on my blog reading, the photo memes, email and news. In Friday's NY Times, I read about the 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, which didn't surprise me and yet news like that never ceases to break my heart.

Otherwise, I know that the stockmarket continues to plunge, Gitmo is not going to close down as quickly as we'd hoped and that Republicans are arseholes, but that's not news, is it?

I'm planning to eat Indian leftovers, do a couple of loads of laundry, watch President Obama's address to the Congress and call it a night.

And this is a photo of my amaryllis, which has been blooming deliciously.

photo by the pagan sphinx