The 2013 Pond!

The back yard is now complete with a Woman at the Well sending freshly recycled water to the seven fish in 

our pond.

The Woman at the Well has always been a powerful symbol for me. This bronze beauty seems quite content and satisfied to carry the vessels to be filled and refilled at the watering hole.

I have been to the well many times sometimes too thirsty to be simply satisfied. Other times I have brought healing water to the well. 

Our lives are a dance between the need to be filled and the need to fill. I am grateful for the garden dance at the well.

Frederick Hart's work

This breathtaking acrylic Madonna and Child piece by Frederick Hart is in the Exhibit at NOMA,

New Orleans' Museum of Art, in the Pope John Paul II Collection.

When viewed from either side you see the models of Hart's wife and child in a surreal format.

I was enthralled with this piece and could have easily spent most of the morning contemplating this image.

The exhibit centers around Pope John Paul's visit to New Orleans in 1987. 

I spent an hour earlier in the day having hypnotherapy in preparation for a surgical procedure that I will have in July. This was a perfect follow-up to that session. Filling my mind and spirit with beautiful images to assist in the healing process. 

http://noma.org/exhibitions/detail/65/

My childhood thinking tree in City Park, New Orleans

 City Park, New Orleans, LA

City Park Sculpture Garden

Both of these trees are in the City Park area within 100 yards of one another.
I am so grateful that the second image from the sculptor, Rene' Margitte, has not been the fate of my childhood thinking tree. The oak tree from my childhood has many branches that reach and linger upon the ground. It is such an easy climbing tree.

When things were too much to handle at home, I walked the mile and a half to the park and sat on and under this tree. No apps to distract me, just the tree. I know that this tree has harbored many souls like me.

I am most grateful for this wise old soul. Visiting her reminds me to not take myself too seriously. When is the last time you gave yourself time to rest under the limbs of a majestic tree?

This summer solstice invites you outside to sit and enjoy yourself.

Peace.

Beautiful Stainglass of Mary

This 100 plus year old glass is one of the many at Father Seelos Church on Dauphine Street in New Orleans.

The facial details are breath taking. Our churches like our food feed the soul and the spirit. How can one not be motivated to sing praises when contemplating such mastery and mystery!

The feminine spirit is so complex and compassionate. Every culture has its feminine spirits as guides. My wish is that everyone who reads this be guided by the sacred within themselves to sing and praise on this second day of summer.

Garden Guardians

These gardens frolic all over our green city. This is one of my favorites located near the Fair Grounds where our Jazz Fest takes place. This angelic guardian seems to invite stillness and meditation. These are must do activities during the sultry heat of our summers.

Slowing down is mandated by our proximity to the equator. This guardian works along side Mother Nature to coerce the Type-A humans into a more reflective frame of  mind.

Peace, quiet, afternoon naps: these are the requests from the Guardian.

The quiet of a summer afternoon;

Cloudy with a chance of no balls.*

Required to do nothing in a Type-A world.

Settling into a thunder storm;

Waiting and watching sans weather Chanel.

Using human senses to determine where and when;

We’ve forgotten how.

i Pads have replaced eyes, ears and nose.

GPS and sky watching are our new ears and eyes;

Watch out for the falling limbs!

 Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,  by Judi Barrett

Summer in the French Quarter

A mixture of wisteria with horse manure.

The sweet smells of a summer night;

Walking down Royal Street in the twilight heat.

Feet hitting the banquet with slowed rhythm.

Drumming out a call to your ancestors

“I’ve returned to hear your message

To learn your story

To remember

To feel.”

Close your eyes, allow your mind to revisit 1824.

Listen to the sounds of horse hooves

On cobble stones echoing the voices

From the past: “Marie-Renee

Come see, cher bring me

That plate

of tomatoes.”

Open your eyes to the sight of vine-covered garden walls.

Monogrammed wrought iron balcony grill-work

Buildings of plastered brick

Galleries, fire walls,

Pirates Alley,

Cathedral Garden,

Wishing gates.

In the heat of the night, we inhale the memories,

The senses remember and embrace the history:

A history that echoes

“Come back,

Return,

Remember.”

July 1, 2002

Rosalynn Rizzo-Moore

Images:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cornichon.org/archives/Carriage%2520in%2520French%2520Quarter.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.cornichon.org/2005/09/&h=678&w=954&sz=69&tbnid=9d0iuDmT1vE5BM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=140&zoom=1&usg=__vO5KxfYIpBy31P0h65LkvUXjF_w=&docid=ddwCaxGKn8b4-M&sa=X&ei=kZq_UZCkCofs9ASZhoGQDA&sqi=2&ved=0CEkQ9QEwCA&dur=391

New Orleans' Ladies

Ya YA Sisterhood, Fried Green Tomatoes, Street Car Named Desire,

Crimes of the Heart, The Color Purple, Steel Magnolias;

All themes about Southern women.

Women who drink, do it all, or had it all done to them

Conspire to live out roles created for them

In the sultry heat of the South.

Perhaps the heat is to blame for the Xeroxing behavior

Or is it the expectations of our mother’s mothers?

Or the geographic proximity to the Gulf?

Do we walk in our mother’s shoes too long as little girls,

That our feet start to desire to follow the paths of

Those who came before?

Does playing “Grownup” create in us a space that can only

Be filled with the past; with no room for self discovery

And separation? The separation is the really painful part:

We are, and are not, our mothers: grandmothers, sisters, daughters.

We discover in brief sober periods the pain of our real selves.

Little-by-little we carve out a sculpture of ourselves

Editing and erasing as we go along

“ No, that’s not me; that’s my mother.”

We erase little pieces of her until there is nothing left.

Then we wonder why we are so shallow, small and little.

Like looking up to our mothers while we stand in front of her in a mirror

This is me; this is she; or are we us?

Why can’t we be all of this and more?

We are our mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters and More.

Gestalt math teaches us we are and are not the sum of our parts.

Freud spoke of Electra Complex, Later the Cinderella Complex.

We are complex, ask any husband, brother, father.

And complex is Good, not evil.

Eve ate the apple and enjoyed it.

The fruit is good, Mother God made it so.

So let us enjoy the fruit of our wombs; labor and love;

And be all of those women who came before and MORE.

Rosalynn Moore

Zydeco and Tomato Festival...

We celebrate everything in New Orleans

Zydeco music, fried green tomatoes, street dancing, and colorful people.... Mais, that's where it's at, Darlin'

One of my former students, Randy Brien, and I were photographed while dancing the Cajun 2 step Saturday. The Times Picayune photographer asked for the spelling of our names. We dance a lot together.  Dancing is acceptable here for any event. 

And we are good dancers, too! 

The following is an excerpt from my book, Recipes for Recovery:

       Randy Brien, the French named mispronounced in New Orleans to sound like Brian, has been a friend, colleague, and a former student since 1972 when we met in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, near Bayou Blue. Randy: intelligent, handsome, articulate, witty Student Council President was a one man “Keep the brand new school clean,” advocate. He had established a secret committee composed of school leaders and athletes to patrol the hallways and bathrooms of H.L. Bourgeois High School. The school had been constructed on the site of a former Homas Indian Reservation, and oddly named after a former superintendent of schools. Randy’s unofficial, Bust Ass Committee was a mystery to the faculty and staff until the Class of 1976’s Ten Year Reunion, when committee members identified themselves and told us they had taken the matter of the punctured and missing ceiling tiles into their own hands, and that very little “ass busting” was necessary. After one or two “Come to Jesus” Meetings the tiles that were replaced remained pristine.

I am very fortunate to have made a friend of a former student. 

Magnolia Match Sticks

Fall by the dozens;

Fill the smooth curve leaf.

Drop from the bloom

It’s fragrance burst forth!

As each match stick

Strikes its mark.

Lemon, verbena

Sighing Southern summers

The salty night has its perfume.

"Life is a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing. Keep pretending."

Jim Henson

Here is a picture of my classroom at Ruppel Academy on April 7, 2011.

We  hung 765 cranes from the ceiling of a very bland portable building. I called this day imagination day in my classroom.  We spent 20 minutes outside just being. The students could draw, write, or make shapes out of the clouds.

We need a lot more imagination days and more crane folding days. We made more than 1,000 cranes and mailed them to Oshkosh. The company promised to send an article of clothing to the children of Japan effected by the tsunami of 2011 for every folded crane.

My dedicated students came in during lunch to complete this tasks since we could not have more than one imagination day.

I recall a time in education when we could help direct the students to the needs of others and the ideal of a true global community. Now we have our students so focused on testing that we have lost the bigger picture.

Go to the address below and fold your own cranes.

Peace.

http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KLqIIHKbFRszUASAD7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBrc3VyamVwBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQD?p=origami+cranes&vid=4ca62fafa3529e7c31c9bb29b4fc9642&l=2%3A51&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DV.5059214814609796%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DbOxx8Xgez-E&tit=How+To+Make+an+Origami+Crane&c=12&sigr=11a4bj4b4&age=0&&tt=b

View the classrooms of the world as incubators. Yes, for the future success of our planet. 

What do incubators do? They preserve a perfect environment. There is no stress. There is as much peace as possible. No outside influences are allowed. No germs, no pollutants are permitted to permeate the perimeter.
Think about what the classroom has become: A testing ground; A battle ground. There is no peace. There is no harmony. There is no balance.
Any wonder that we are failing?

Ogden Museum of Southern Art Exhibit

http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/images/80.gif

"Ah, The Mysteries of a Southern Night"

This work by William R. Hollingsworth captured my attention yesterday at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. I invited a friend from Dominican High School, the class of 1966, to view this exhibit with me.

I soaked up this image. It drew me in just as the nights of New Orleans do. I came home after 10 P.M. Thursday night to the wavering scent of night blooming jasmine from my neighbor's fence. The night was very warm and the scent seems to be infested with a late night intensity.

I felt the same sense penetrate the air at the Ogden during the day-light hours while feasting on these images. There are several inviting displays. Check it out for yourself.

What is your favorite work?

http://www.ogdenmuseum.org/exhibitions/index.html