awake enough to watch tv
there's been a party going on next door for a couple of hours and on the one hand i don't begrudge anyone a good time now that the weather's nice, and they were playing songs i like before, and at least it's not the neighbors doing home improvement with loud power tools like they were this morning (they woke me up >.< ), but at the same time, i want some peace and quiet to watch netflix!
because there's a silver lining to being stuck in my room, and it's that i can watch random netflix shows i haven't gotten to yet. right now that's something called this is a robbery, which is about the second biggest art heist ever [1], when two guys dressed as cops got inside the isabella stewart gardner museum in boston and eighty-one minutes later walked out with thirteen works of art. they cut the paintings out of the frames, and afterwards the museum just hung the empty frames back on the wall. isabella left the museum and everything in it to the city on condition that nothing be moved or changed, and i guess that means after a painting is stolen you hang up the empty frame anyway. it's little creepy to see in person. it happened in 1990 and none of the art has ever been found and neither have the thieves or whatever mastermind might have been behind it.
one of the canvases was rembrandt's only seascape - the storm on the sea of galilee - which made an appearance in an episode of the blacklist, which i thought was pretty fitting. if anyone could have masterminded the theft of all that art without repercussion - or knew who did - it would be reddington.
(i could work on my bang, but eh. it's at the knitting-scenes-together stage, which is sometimes fun and sometimes kind of boring, and then i need to write a summary. i hate summaries. not quite as much as i hate titles, but still.)
i have chinese takeout (well, delivery, technically) for dinner now that passover is over and i can eat rice again. :D i apparently can't count so the delivery guy got a VERY LARGE tip. which, >.< but at the same time, eh, i'm supporting a local business and a local employee. and i have A LOT of fried rice.
have another grandmother poem. :D
I walk around the small tribal
welfare cabin Kookum
had lived in, searching
for her grinding stones.
On hot August days
we would sit for hours grinding
chokecherries, pits and all.
She would hum or sing
softly in Cree, put the mash
into small patties on cookie sheets,
cover them with screens
to keep the birds out,
set them on the cabin’s low roof
to dry in the hot North Dakota sun.
In the dead of winter, she would soak
the dried patties overnight,
then fry them in bacon grease,
add flour and sugar,
the small shack filling with a tangy
sweet scent, and summer
flooded my every pore.
I take my grandkids berry picking,
they complain of heat, mosquitoes, ticks,
twigs catching their braids.
I wear my apron, make a pouch
to pick the low hanging berries
with one hand and toss them in
like Kookum did.
Kneeling before the flat rock,
braids tied back,
smaller rock clasped in hand,
I pound the fresh berries
pits and all.
Grandkids want to try,
and soon the rock is singing
my grandmother’s songs.
--"Tawkwaymenahnah", Denise Lajimodiere
[1] the biggest art heist ever is the dresden green vault buglary, which happened in 2019 when thieves made off with an estimated BILLION DOLLARS' WORTH of royal jewelry. the gardner heist is worth at least $500m by now - it happened in 1990 - that's nothing to sneeze at but it's not a billion.
because there's a silver lining to being stuck in my room, and it's that i can watch random netflix shows i haven't gotten to yet. right now that's something called this is a robbery, which is about the second biggest art heist ever [1], when two guys dressed as cops got inside the isabella stewart gardner museum in boston and eighty-one minutes later walked out with thirteen works of art. they cut the paintings out of the frames, and afterwards the museum just hung the empty frames back on the wall. isabella left the museum and everything in it to the city on condition that nothing be moved or changed, and i guess that means after a painting is stolen you hang up the empty frame anyway. it's little creepy to see in person. it happened in 1990 and none of the art has ever been found and neither have the thieves or whatever mastermind might have been behind it.
one of the canvases was rembrandt's only seascape - the storm on the sea of galilee - which made an appearance in an episode of the blacklist, which i thought was pretty fitting. if anyone could have masterminded the theft of all that art without repercussion - or knew who did - it would be reddington.
(i could work on my bang, but eh. it's at the knitting-scenes-together stage, which is sometimes fun and sometimes kind of boring, and then i need to write a summary. i hate summaries. not quite as much as i hate titles, but still.)
i have chinese takeout (well, delivery, technically) for dinner now that passover is over and i can eat rice again. :D i apparently can't count so the delivery guy got a VERY LARGE tip. which, >.< but at the same time, eh, i'm supporting a local business and a local employee. and i have A LOT of fried rice.
have another grandmother poem. :D
I walk around the small tribal
welfare cabin Kookum
had lived in, searching
for her grinding stones.
On hot August days
we would sit for hours grinding
chokecherries, pits and all.
She would hum or sing
softly in Cree, put the mash
into small patties on cookie sheets,
cover them with screens
to keep the birds out,
set them on the cabin’s low roof
to dry in the hot North Dakota sun.
In the dead of winter, she would soak
the dried patties overnight,
then fry them in bacon grease,
add flour and sugar,
the small shack filling with a tangy
sweet scent, and summer
flooded my every pore.
I take my grandkids berry picking,
they complain of heat, mosquitoes, ticks,
twigs catching their braids.
I wear my apron, make a pouch
to pick the low hanging berries
with one hand and toss them in
like Kookum did.
Kneeling before the flat rock,
braids tied back,
smaller rock clasped in hand,
I pound the fresh berries
pits and all.
Grandkids want to try,
and soon the rock is singing
my grandmother’s songs.
--"Tawkwaymenahnah", Denise Lajimodiere
[1] the biggest art heist ever is the dresden green vault buglary, which happened in 2019 when thieves made off with an estimated BILLION DOLLARS' WORTH of royal jewelry. the gardner heist is worth at least $500m by now - it happened in 1990 - that's nothing to sneeze at but it's not a billion.