We're back - below are many posts (dating back to the end of March) for our faithful readers. Sorry for the backlog: we've been busy being present in our full lives. It's a good problem to have.
Spring is definitely here – flowers in bloom, wide fluctuations in temperatures, and allergies. Ah yes, we survived an Ohio winter, and just when we thought Ohio couldn’t be more miserable, we encounter April through June…yikes. Still, the flowers are beautiful, and the sun feels nice on my skin. I suppose, like winter, I’ll take it one day at a time, as we are also doing with sweet Odin. He is definitely limping, and we have started the narcotic painkillers. The tumor in his leg is visibly larger and our days with him are full of gratitude that we are enjoying yet another day with him.
We officially broke in the backyard with our first cookout. mtw made a delicious smoked whole chicken in the cooker and we had corn bread muffins, biscuits, beans and rice, salad, and homemade cookies. We hosted our neighbors, a work colleague and his wife, mtw’s brother, and the neighbor’s puppy (who mdw and eaw walk in the afternoons – the puppy fix without the puppy stress☺ ) eaw and his buddy, Colby, turned it into a drive in movie, watching Happy Feet outside as dusk approached. It is so fun to see him with peers – he’s getting so independent, so talkative, and as always, so cute.
Happy birthday mtw! We are glad you were born. Mtw’s younger brother is with us for the week. Eaw is thrilled to have his uncle around. It’s our first Wall family visitor. Yipee!
Quiet Sunday today. We enjoyed some outside time in our little back yard, enjoying its simplicity. eaw tried out his new tee-ball set and showed much promise with a steep learning curve. Samantha especially loved the tee-ball, sometimes not waiting for eaw before taking the ball. Later, we pulled out the sidewalk chalk and eaw went to work creating some masterpieces. The sweetest moment of the day came as mdw tried to answer eaw’s questions as to why Odin did not want to chase the ball. eaw responded with the sincerity of his understanding, creating an empathetic triptych that I will cherish forever.
mdw was affiliated last quarter with a Forsythe project sponsored by OSU and spearheaded by Norah Zuniga-Shaw, one of mdw’s colleagues. The entire experience ended up being very rewarding and entailed teaching six weeks of a twelve week studio class for the participants. mdw’s portion was followed by four weeks of teaching by Nik Haffner, who shared choreographer William Forsythe’s (and his own) improvisational tools with the dancers. The final two weeks were spent assisting with an installation piece called “Monster Partitur,” that was performed at the Wexner Center on campus. The piece references the slow death of Forsythe’s wife to cancer. I was able to see it twice – a very powerful and moving piece wherein the hyperarticulate dancer creates a score through vocal sounds that are filtered and mixed by a composer/audio engineer as the dancer is making them. Here’s a brief description from the Wexner Center’s website:Dancer Alessio Silvestrin delivers a mesmerizing performance against a backdrop of sculptural elements created from life-size models of human skeletons and line drawings traced from these gnarled forms, which also serve as cues in the performer's score (the word "partitur" in the title is a reference to the musical scores utilized by orchestra conductors). Monster Partitur is a condensation of and companion to Forsythe's Bessie Award–winning You made me a monster.We took eaw to see it today as it was an informal and relatively brief performance (15 minutes). He was awestuck and asked to say hi to the dancer afterward. The performer was completely gracious. So far, eaw has seen live performances of choreography by William Forsythe, Trisha Brown, David Dorfman and Pilobolus. That’s a pretty good roster for a 2 year old.
mdw is always on the lookout for adventures and activities that are a little bit off the beaten path. Today we found one that literally took us off the path and deep into the woods at a nearby Metro Park called Sharon Woods. The purpose of the guided walk was to learn about, and perhaps see some frogs, tadpoles or other marsh life. eaw was one of the youngest participants, but he was a trooper, walking most of the way himself, climbing on, over, around, and between logs and digging around in the marshland looking for frogs. mtw and mdw managed to get lost heading back to the trail so we felt a true sense of adventure, finally making our way through a thistle patch – ouch! We’re glad he doesn’t mind getting dirty, and we hope that bodes well for a lot of camping in our future.
