Happy New Year, 2019

Wishing everyone a great New Year! I'm still blogging food, books, travel, and random thoughts at

maefood.blogspot.com

In the past year, to update the travel theme -- we took three big trips: to Israel in spring, to the Pacific Northwest in autumn, and to Paris for Thanksgiving week. A brief summary in photos:

Kiryat Ono, Israel. Passover Seder at Janet's house.

British Columbia, Desolation Sound.

Paris. Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens.

And here at home in Ann Arbor, I'm taking photos of street art and murals, like this one on Liberty Street.

Mysterious Maps

Here's a perfectly nice map of the Matthaei Botanical Garden near the point where you enter the woods.
Note that West (Dixboro Road) is at the top.

After you have walked for a while, you find another map. They must want to mess with your head --
this map is reversed from the first one. You can see that West/Dixboro Road is at the bottom.

We had a very nice walk in the gardens again on a beautiful morning this week. I just wonder who designed those maps!

A Quiet Botanical Garden

In the woods at Matthaei Botanical Gardens this afternoon it was very quiet. The fall colors have become very subdued.
Only a few other people were walking in the woods.

Inside the greenhouse. 

Insect-eating plants seemed to be waiting eagerly for prey. 

I always love the indoor goldfish pond.

On the way home we stopped to watch the swans on the river in the very late afternoon sun.

Art Fair 2015

Ibrahim, seller of West and Central African Art

Mr. B's always popular piano music, which travels on a special bicycle cart.

Mosquito Walk

Coral mushrooms growing on the path.

Summer in Michigan: We tried a bird walk this morning, but all we saw were two robins and thousands of mosquitos. 

In the tall grass: mosquito territory! 

The swampy area is deep in mud. And swarming with insects.

Dogma Catmantoo

In the window of the pet store Dogma-Catmantoo -- a poster from the Cat's Gallery of Art.

Birdwatching trip in the Nichols Arboretum

While Len and the rest of the members of the Audubon Society who were on the trip were watching the warblers, I mainly enjoyed the beautiful blue sky and the wildflowers lit by bright May sunshine.

My Art Fair, Ann Arbor, 2014

Ibrahim's Booth

Last week was the Ann Arbor Art Fair, a madhouse of art and commercial selling of all sorts of merchandise, snacks, bottled water, tee-shirts, and more that extends throughout the downtown area and on campus. I spent a few hours walking around there by myself on Wednesday when it opened, and more on Thursday evening with friends. The "original" fair, which began 52 years ago, was formerly at the south side of campus. It's now on the campus near the Carl Milles fountain and the Michigan League. And it's always my favorite. This year I saw many appealing booths there, belonging to artists in glass, ceramics, clothing, photography, painting, hand-woven straw hats, jewelry, and more.

My only purchase was from Ibrahim, a dealer in african masks, who rents some space from the owner of a shop just outside the fair. He has no official designation, he just drives in and sets up where  he has a space. I have purchased masks from  him in previous years, and I admire his selection of high-quality wood carvings from many African tribes. I believe that he travels to Africa to obtain his wares.

Masks on my living room wall. The two small ones are this year's purchase.

Our new masks come from the same area as the existing mask above them. Ibrahim says they are "passport masks," that is, carried as identification of the person's membership in a particular tribe or group. Many tribes create small masks for various personal use. They can be amulets to protect hunters, they might be kept secret in one's home, or might be worn on one's arm to show affiliations.

All three masks have a central bird figure above the face. In the new mask to the right, the bird leans over, and its beak also forms the nose of the mask. This identifies them as coming from Ivory Coast, from the Guro division of the Senufo people. We suspect that our masks were used in a village because their interiors smell strongly but pleasantly of wood smoke, as if they have been near a campfire, but neither the interiors nor the beautifully finished exteriors show any signs of burning. Of course this is only a guess.

For more information on the mask we've owned for a while, see this blog post that I did when we bought that mask.

Gallup Park Birds

A few days ago, we rented a canoe and paddled around the pond at Gallup Park looking for birds. Len has already posted them on Flickr, but I wanted to have them here as well:

A young green heron. Its parents were nearby. All were surprisingly unafraid of the canoe.

A sandpiper walking on the lily pads

A baby cliff swallow waiting for its parents to bring food --
we watched the adults go in and out of the nests.

Many swallow nests are just underneath the bike path on the
road bridge over the water.

Agave in Bloom, Matthei Botanical Gardens

This agave plant at the Botanical Gardens showed signs of its one and only
blooming cycle a few months ago. It has now grown through the roof (the
management opened up a roof panel) and is in bloom. After it blooms, it dies --
but leaves clones called pups as its survivors.

As You Like It in the Arb

Dinner on the grass before the performance of "As You Like It"
by the Shakespeare in the Arb company.
As in former years, we brought a picnic.

Walking through the peonies to get to the first location: the
performance moves among the woods, glens, and fields of
the Arboretum.

Touchstone the Fool, the French maid, Rosalind, and Celia:
all played by fantastic actors.

The wrestling scene

The audience (musicians way in back).

We enjoyed a marvelous performance in what I think is the most perfect Forest of Arden imaginable!

Hudson Mills Park, Dexter, Michigan

 In case it's not obvious, I finally have an iPhone, and I'm trying it out by taking photos in various scenic locations. A selfie was of course mandatory, though maybe I need to practice a less serious expression when I'm backed up to the scenery.

I'm also practicing other iPhone skills. Keying in the password fast enough to answer the telephone. (Update: Evelyn reminds me that you can answer the phone without entering the password. I knew that. Silly me.) Sending and receiving messages on the itty bitty keyboard. Reading mail while in formerly impossible places -- yes, I read my mail while walking through the park. No, nothing was urgent, though I did get a few new messages that I was glad to see. It's quite different from my old dumb phone: that would be the one I washed in the washing machine and dried in the dryer. I'll try not to do that to the iPhone.

A family of sandhill cranes were making their way past the basketball
and tennis courts as we walked by. These nearly 5-foot tall birds are now
residents of several of the Metroparks around us.

Downtown Ann Arbor on a beautiful June evening

Many people eating outside, walking on what's left of the sidewalks.

All those restaurants make a lot of trash!

Lots of people waiting at the Ark,
Lots of buses taking people somewhere or other.