Oooh, nice.

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Art education drabble:

Diners, bedrooms, and barbershops take on mythical stature as they are bathed in such glorious light that you think that you should be looking at Tuscany, not a Pennsylvania mining town.

The few people in these paintings all seem to be seeking refuge in the light. Some may even have found it.

Whatever his intent, the artist has taught me this: things do not have to be pretty to be beautiful, train yards and old hotel rooms are sacred spaces, and the tired woman sitting at the diner counter is every bit as magnificent as Venus rising from the sea.

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I thought y'all might appreciate this quote from an interview with Tom Russell, one of my favorite songwriters.

You've had a fairly rambling and diverse life. If a teenaged songwriter came to you for advice, what would you tell her?

All the road dust eventually shakes itself off into a rhyme. It's the Gnostic process. Everything you bring forth will save you; everything you do not bring forth will destroy you. Young singer-songwriters? Advice? Go get a job in a bar and learn ten Hank Williams songs. Get lost in Mexico. Do your homework. Learn to walk on the ground before you get up on the high wire. Forget about all this bullshit about folk alliances, conferences and Songwriting For Dummies books, and magazines and technology.... where has it led us? Has all this bullshit created anything better then The Beatles and Dylan and Hank Williams? Hell no. Songwriting is about building on your roots then finding out who you are. and writing down to the blood and bones. You wanna sell out and stand in line with all the other zombies? Well there's buses leaving for Nashville and Austin and Toronto every hour. Get on board little chillen! The promised land? It's the dead fucking the dead. in a vacuum, to quote Bukowski. But then I digress..

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DAYUM, Ginger. I loved that...

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Anne, that was very thought provoking.

...Still thinking. Nice.

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OK, there was going to be a "Miniature, Part Two," but it ended up just not working in drabble form. Suffice it to say I'm now including it as a plot point in the story, because it just fits. But here's my second effort, also fitting what I thought the topic was going to be rather than what it actually was. Hmm...is it Mary Sue-ing if I work out my own childbirth issues through my characters?

Motherhood

James moved their mother’s portrait to the landing. A new one, of Lucy with Baby Meg, now has the place of honor over the mantel in the drawing room.

Each time Anna climbs the stairs now, she has to stop at the landing to catch her breath. She clutches her gravid belly and gazes upon the mother she never knew, the mother who died not a week after she was born.

Anna has lived too long among the brave not to despise cowardice, all the more so in herself. Yet when she looks at her mother’s portrait, the horror and dread swallow her up. She’d run from this battle, if only she could.

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Anne--showing my art ignorance here, but which painter are you talking about? I remember a painting I've seen reprinted a lot with people sitting at a diner, all lit up in a dark night, that you reminded me of.

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Susan, your piece is intriguing.

And I'm sorry, but this is a tic of mine. Like yours of rein and reign.

I. Main Entry: 1man·tle Pronunciation: 'man-t&l Function: noun Etymology: Middle English mantel, from Old French, from Latin mantellum 1 a : a loose sleeveless garment worn over other clothes : CLOAK b : a mantle regarded as a symbol of preeminence or authority 2 a : something that covers, enfolds, or envelops b (1) : a fold or lobe or pair of lobes of the body wall of a mollusk or brachiopod that in shell-bearing forms lines the shell and bears shell-secreting glands -- see CLAM illustration (2) : the soft external body wall that lines the test or shell of a tunicate or barnacle c : the outer wall and casing of a blast furnace above the hearth; broadly : an insulated support or casing in which something is heated 3 : the back, scapulars, and wings of a bird 4 : a lacy hood or sheath of some refractory material that gives light by incandescence when placed over a flame 5 a : REGOLITH b : the part of the interior of a terrestrial planet and especially the earth that lies beneath the crust and above the central core

II. Main Entry: man·tel Pronunciation: 'man-t&l Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Old French, mantle 1 a : a beam, stone, or arch serving as a lintel to support the masonry above a fireplace b : the finish around a fireplace 2 : a shelf above a fireplace

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Fixed. (And I really had no idea it was a separate spelling--I guess it goes to show I know more about horses than fireplaces.)

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(I didn't know either, Susan. I have the sudden desire to find ever piece I've ever written, ever, that mentions a mantle, and correct it. Instead, I will tell myself the following covers it...)

13 entries found for mantle.
man·tel also man·tle ( P ) Pronunciation Key (mntl)
n. 1. An ornamental facing around a fireplace. Also called mantelpiece.
2. The protruding shelf over a fireplace. Also called mantelpiece, mantelshelf, fireboard.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Middle English mantel, as in mantiltre, beam over fireplace opening (perhaps from its use for drying wet clothing). See manteltree.]

[Download or Buy Now] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Further down, there's also this:

v. man·tled, man·tling, man·tles

v. tr.
To cover with or as if with a mantle; conceal. See Synonyms at clothe.

v. intr.
To spread or become extended over a surface.
To become covered with a coating, as scum or froth on the surface of a liquid.
To be overspread by blushes or colors: a face that was mantled in joy.

The first definition under the intransitive verb form supports m-a-n-t-l-e (in e-mail).

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