Artnotes: Look What's Coming

Oranges in a Turquoise Bowl   Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  18 x 22"  45 x 55 cm

Boats Carnivale  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas  12 x 24"  30 x 60cm    

 Unpainted masks  Blair Pessemier  14 x 19.5"  35 x 50 cm  

 Madonna della Robbia  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  25 x 17"  61 x 43cm

Madonna near Castelfranco  Laurie Fox Pessemier  Acrylic/newspaper  25 x 17"  61 x 43cm

Cyclamen  Laurie Fox Pessmeier  12 x 12"  30 x 30 cm

Pagliacci with Drum  Blair Pessemier  Acrylic/canvas 16 x 12"  40 x 30cm

It’s been a rainy and difficult week here in Stimigliano.  Harika was “sicker than a dog”, and threw up at least 2 dozen times on the rug.  I mention the rug because although our house is entirely paved in tile, the carpet was the target, on nearly the same place each time.  We have friends who often take care of neighborhood dogs, and all of them, including ours, choose the same spot on their carpet to barf:  must be electrical fields.  When the rain lets up some, I’ll hang the rug over the balcony to “wash”. It will never be the same.

It wasn’t only Harika who was sick.  A young American friend in Perugia was taken ill.  We went to see him today.  He was much improved to the point we even enjoyed an Italian lunch together.  We’ll see him and his family in few weeks up at our Rocca Malatina house.  I had never been to Perugia before and it was quite wonderful.  It is an amazingly intact medieval city – wonderful stone buildings cresting the hill.  There was a sense of ongoing life there:  I mean, our friend would have been one of how many people still occupying this 15^th century abode?

And it was wonderful to be with a younger person – I could understand how grandparents go gaga over the next generation.  I felt even more compelled to fight to make the world better, cleaner, more full of love for him.  And he’ll work to clean it up.

Harika’s was a harrowing ordeal, this sickness ensuing at about 2 AM every nights since last Saturday.  I’d hear her walking around and next thing…  So we weren’t sleeping, either.   We went to the vet suggested to us by the owner of a healthy looking golden retriever.  The vet was sure we had done something wrong; this is always a good sign, I believe, that the vet takes the side of the dog.  He gave us medicine. It didn’t work.

I became expert at looking for clues to Harika’s plight.  She was only throwing up water and bile, so any other items were suspect.  Finally, I saw what looked like little bits of tomato peel.  Except they were completely uniform:  plastic!!!   I thought of those sad dead whale pictures.  She did not eat all that day, but later perked up.  It was the first morning I’d not given her usual morning snack:  dried duck strips (made in China).  In the next 24 hours she made an astounding recovery and now she’s eating homemade turkey soup.

We went to the cemetery again this week in pursuit of flowers.  Our town is just too small for a flower store, and we can find plants at nurseries a little further out.  But I like the cemetery, full of Maries, and possible free flowers, and the flower seller always seems a little lonely.   All he really had this week was one apparently pitiful cyclamen.  When I balked about it having only 2 blooms, he lifted its green skirt, and said, look what’s  coming!